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A GROUP OF BRAHMINS 



INDIAN LIFE 
IN TOWN AND 
COUNTRY % k 

By Herbert Compton 

author of " a free lance in a far land," " a 
king's hussar," etc. 



ILLUSTRATED 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 

Zbc 1knicfterl)oc??ec ptcee 
1904 



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UBffss-V «f OON0RESS 
Two OoDies Reraived 

SEP 20 1904 
oOooyrffht Emtry 

CLASS ^ XXe. Na 

'^ COPY B 






Copyright, 1904 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Published, September, 1904 



Ube Iftnfcfterbocfter ffTress, "Wew l^orft 



CONTENTS 

Nativk Indian I/IFe: 

CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

India as It Is . . 3 

CHAPTER II 
Castb 17 

CHAPTER III 
Manners and Customs 36 

CHAPTER IV 
From Ryots to Rajahs 51 

CHAPTER V 

Jacks in Oi^ificB ^^ 

CHAPTER VI 

MKN-AT-ARMS AND SOME OTHERS . . . . 8l 

CHAPTER VII 
Ladies Last ,98 

CHAPTER VIII 
Woman's Wrongs 113 

V 



vi Contents 

CHAPTER IX 

PAGE 

The Indian at Home 127 

CHAPTER X 
In The Sunshine .141 

CHAPTER XI 
The Goi^den East .155 

CHAPTER XII 
On the Path oe Progress 168 

AngIvO Indian Life 

CHAPTER XIII 
The Land oe Exii,e 183 

CHAPTER XIV 
AngivO-Indian Castes 199 

CHAPTER XV 

BUNGAI.OW IvlEE 2X2 

CHAPTER XVI 
OUT-OE-DOOR LlEE 227 

CHAPTER XVII 
Sepia Surroundings 244 

CHAPTER XVIII 
The GI.AD Cry 259 

Index 273 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



A Group of Brahmins . . . Frontispiece 

A MUSSUIyMAN AND A BRAHMIN CI^ERK . . . 20 

View of the Taj Mahai, at Agra ... 32 

The Harbour at Cai^cutta 58 

The Jain Tempi^e at Dei.wara .... 64 

A Street Scene in Jeypore 78 

Parrati Hii<i. and IvAke at Poonah ... 90 

The Benares Ghats 104 

The Tumma Musjid and Quadrangi,e at Dei^hi 122 
The Tomb of Zenab Ai^iya at Lucknow . .138 

A Visit to the Camp 164 



A Group of Mahomedans 



Vlll 



Illustrations 



PAGE 
214 



A Dak Bungai,ow at Narkunda . 

Thej Camping Ground 228 

The Hoi,y Tank in Bombay 240 

An Indo-Mongoi,ian Woman 264 




INDIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND 
COUNTRY 



NATIVE INDIAN LIFE 



INDIAN LIFE IN TOWN 
AND COUNTRY 



CHAPTER I 

INDIA AS IT IS 

IT is a habit of current speech to refer to In- 
dia much as one does to France, Spain, or 
Germany, conscious only that it is a far more 
extensive country. In the map of the world, it is 
depicted as an all -red possession, which tends to 
the suggestion of a homogeneous land. But it is, 
in fact, a conglomeration of distinct kingdoms and 
peoples, differing as widely in conditions and char- 
acteristics as Russia and Portugal, or the Nor- 
wegian and the Turk. 

The term ' ' Indian ' ' should convey to the mind 
the same cosmopolitan suggestion as the expres- 
sion ** European. " Under this really generic de- 
signation are grouped numerous races as distinct 
and individual as the Frenchman and the German, 
the Dutchman and the Greek. And when we 
3 



4 Indian Life 

come to discuss *' Our Neighbour the Indian," it 
must be understood we are arbitrarily making 
concrete what is in the abstract a heterogeneous, 
polyglot combination of individuals, who belong 
to a dozen different nationalities, speak a Babel of 
tongues, and live in a variety of countries, the 
physical features of which differ as much as their 
climatic conditions. 

If we can suppose ourselves in the position of 
a Cossack riding through the Khyber Pass, and 
cantering down to Calcutta, Cape Comorin, and 
Karachi, we shall be able to get the best idea of 
the races who inhabit India in their appropriate 
distribution and sequence, and observe them 
toning off like a chromatic scale. Our Cossack 
will find them as diverse as if he penetrated from 
Moscow to Sweden, Spain, and Greece. As he 
emerges from the rugged Pass which has been the 
principal gateway of invasion, he will be con- 
fronted with bearded Mahomedans, speaking 
Pushto; and stalwart Sikhs, speaking Punjabi, 
who will gaze at the intruder with the calm 
confidence begotten of broad shoulders, brawny 
muscles, and a stature often exceeding six feet. 
Penetrating farther, he will observe but little de- 
terioration in the clean-run men of Rohilkhund 
and Oudh, the hardy Jat cultivators about Delhi, 
the martial Rajpoots of Raj pu tana, and the hardy 
Baluchis of the Indus Valley (all speaking strange 
tongues), as they rise in his path in the segment 
of a circle which stretches from mid-Himalayas to 



India As It Is 5 

mid-Sind. These races will coincide physically 
with the Northern peoples of Europe, the Scandi- 
navian, Saxon, Celt, and Teuton. Their origin 
is Aryan, Scythian, Arab, and Tartar. 

Pursuing his road east, south-east, and south, 
the Cossack will discover in the inhabitants of 
Lower Sind, Kattywar, Guzerat, the Northern 
Deccan, Central India, and the Upper Gauge tic 
Valley, races somewhat smaller in stature and 
darker in complexion (speaking several new lan- 
guages), who may not be inaptly compared to the 
French, the Slavs, and the Hungarians. The 
next radius of the circle brings us to the coastal 
countries, where dwell the effeminate Bengalis, 
the midget races who inhabit the Malabar sea- 
board, and the Tamil and Talugu speaking folk 
of Southern India. These, and the Burmese in 
the Far Bast, may fitly represent the Mediter- 
ranean nationalities of Europe. They spring 
from Dravidian and Mongolian stock, and the in- 
fusion of Aryan with non -Aryan blood. The 
scale of physical development is distinctly a slid- 
ing one, as it drops down the peninsula, the 
comparative giants of the north melting into the 
middle-sized Indo- Mongolians of the Far East, 
and the Dravidian dwarfs of the extreme south. 
Here and there, chiefly in mountain or desert 
tracts, aboriginal races will have been met, be- 
longing to the Kolarian division, and displaying 
characteristics of their own. If you could muster 
a representative assemblage of all these races, you 



6 Indian Life 

would find that they expressed themselves in over 
seventy different tongues, represented every shade 
of complexion, and every degree of physical de- 
velopment, and displayed far greater divergencies 
than a similar gathering from Continental Europe 
could produce. 

In similar wise, our roving Cossack will have 
passed through as many countries as there are 
races. On his entry into India, Cashmere, on his 
left, will have supplied a standard of terrestrial 
perfection. It is the Riviera of our Eastern Em- 
pire, where, in the past, the Mogul Emperors were 
wont to revel, and where, in the present, the for- 
tunate Anglo-Indian flits when he desires to enjoy 
a supreme holiday. Radiating east and south, 
the Cossack will perceive in the snowy slopes and 
cool valleys of the Himalayas, the sub- montane 
districts below them, the level plains of the Pun- 
jab, the stifling sands of Sind, the arid deserts of 
Rajputana, the steaming valley of the Gangetic 
basin, the rugged highlands of Central India, the 
tableland of the Deccan, the garden province of 
Guzerat, the palm-fringed Malabar coast, the 
paddy-fields of Burmah, the rocky hinterlands of 
the interior of Southern India, the fertile coastal 
territories of the Coromandel, the forested tracts 
of the Ghauts, Mysore, and the Wynaad, the 
rolling downs of the Neilgherries, and the tropic 
glories of Travancore — he will recognise in all 
these varying scenes distinct countries, differing 
one from another in aspect and altitude, in flora 



India As It Is 7 

and fauna, and in soil and climate, as completely 
as do the peoples who inhabit them in race, 
religion, and language. 

Meanwhile, our hardy traveller might have ex- 
perienced vicissitudes of temperature and rainfall 
able to confound all his previous knowledge, even 
if it comprehended a winter on the shores of the 
Baltic, and a summer on those of the Black Sea. 
For instance, at Murree, in the Punjab, a hill sta- 
tion within a few hours of the Indian Aldershot, 
he might have been buried in six feet of snow; at 
Cheerapoonji, in Assam, half-drowned in a rain- 
fall that exceeds four hundred inches a year. 
The process of thawing could have been acceler- 
ated by a trip to Jacobabad in Sind, where the 
thermometer looks down at 130 degrees in the 
shade; and for a dry climate Bickaneer is hard to 
beat, seeing that twenty-four months may pass 
without any rain at all. Incidentally, our enter- 
prising Cossack might have discovered districts 
where the thermometer straddles over eighty de- 
grees in the twelve months and others where the 
sluggish mercury is seldom called upon to execute 
a variant of more than a dozen. So also with the 
rainfall: here it may continue for eight months, 
whilst two monsoons blow their vapours over the 
land; and there confine itself to eight weeks of 
summer showers. To gain an extended idea of 
what is practicable in the vagaries of the firma- 
ment, a study of the meteorological phenomena of 
England's Eastern Empire will enlarge the mind. 



8 Indian Life 

Concerning a conglomeration of countries so di- 
versified in people, topography, and climate, it is 
difficult to generalise. As we survey the kaleido- 
scopic whole, the wonder rises to find them under 
a single rule. One law runs current through all 
these kingdoms and peoples; one brain directs 
them. The edict issued at Simla or Calcutta can 
control with equal force this cosmopolitan land. 
And yet a hundred and fifty years ago, what is 
now a prosperous and peaceful Empire was a vast 
cockpit for warring nations, a seething hotbed of 
opposing nationalities, and a veritable scene of 
unceasing tumult and battle. 

For nearly fifty years, not a cannon has been 
fired in anger within the confines proper of British 
India, and that is the greatest victory the Eng- 
lish have achieved in the East. Well might De 
Tocqueville write: '' There has never been any- 
thing so wonderful under the sun as the conquest, 
and, still more, the government, of India by the 
British." 

I^et us glance back a hundred years and draw 
a parallel. In 1802, Napoleon wrung from the 
English the peace of Amiens — armistice, we may 
better call it — and compelled them to surrender 
all that they had won during the war with the 
French Republic. For the next decade, the pro- 
gress and prestige of France in Europe resembled 
that of England in India. Each was a career of 
conquest. Wellesley, who broke the power of the 
Sultan of Mysore and the Mahrattas, was, in 



India As It Is 9 

effect, the Napoleon of India. He carried Eng- 
land into the dominant position. Had Napoleon 
consolidated and extended his conquests in the 
West as England did in the East, the whole of 
Europe to-day would have been under the peace- 
ful dominion of France. Had the English made 
no better use of their advantages than the Cor- 
sican, they would to-day be confined to the Gan- 
getic basin, a moderate territory in Madras, 
Bombay city, and one or two ports on the Mala- 
bar coast. But they had the genius to hold, 
assimilate, and extend. Where their foot was 
planted there it stayed, and presently advanced. 
And although they suffered a Moscow in Afghan- 
istan in the 'forties, they avoided a Waterloo at 
Delhi in the 'fifties, and rose as high above their 
difficulties as Napoleon fell below his. India of 
to-day, with its countless kingdoms, principalities, 
and peoples, conquered and held by the sword, yet 
ruled in absolute internal peace, with justice, mod- 
eration, and benefit to its inhabitants, shows what 
a nation can do that can govern as well as conquer. 
It is difficult to say what causes have principally 
operated to bring about this marvellous result; 
how much should be attributed to the genius of 
the conquering race for governing, how much to 
the adaptability of the conquered race for being 
governed. Taken as a whole, the natives of 
India, with the exception of a few turbulent Ma- 
homedans, are law-abiding to the point of ser- 
vility. They are no strangers to submission, and 



lo Indian Life 

perhaps the English have reaped where others 
have sown. Provided you do not interfere with 
their two sacred prejudices, — their caste and wo- 
men, — they will endure more than most people. 
For centuries, they have lived in a subject state; 
subject to ruthless conquerors; subject to pesti- 
lence and famine; subject to the exactions of their 
own rulers. They were pliable material to work 
upon, and when they came under the British 
yoke, meek, spiritless, and browbeaten. Instead 
of oppressing them, England ameliorated their 
condition, and although their prejudices are 
monumental, they had the wit to see that their 
circumstances were improved, and the common- 
sense to adapt themselves to them. That was in 
the old days, before they were educated. Not- 
withstanding they are no older than the 'sixties, 
from that time began the period of present transi- 
tion, which is slowly but surely transforming the 
peoples of India, and changing the East, that has 
been called Unchanging. 

Modern India dates from the opening of the 
Suez Canal, and the influx of prosperity and civil- 
isation that followed it. Ferdinand de Lesseps 
did more for the Indian Empire in one decade 
than England did in all the previous ones. In 
these days, when one has only to go to Ludgate 
Circus to take a ticket for Central Africa, it is diflfi- 
cult to believe that a generation ago there were 
great tracts in the Indian Empire where you 
habitually travelled on men's shoulders to reach 



India As It Is 1 1 

your destination. I do not mean to imply that 
you have not to do so still — I have a vivid recol- 
lection, not so many months ago, of a twelve 
hours' journey in a ** dhoolie " or palanquin — but 
twenty-five thousand miles of railway have been 
built since 1870. The railway is the greatest re- 
volutionist of modern times, and especially in a 
country like India, where the inhabitants are 
bound in the iron chains of caste, and where na- 
tions are divided from nations, and sections from 
sections, by gaps there were no means of bridg- 
ing until the third-class railway carriage came, 
not only to transport them, but to shuffle them 
up, teach them to mingle with one another, and 
cast them cheek by jowl in the same compart- 
ment. The introduction of transit was followed 
by travel, the best form of education. People 
who see a little want to see more; who learn a 
little want to learn more. The peasant who 
stole a peep at the train gliding by, his super- 
stitious mind convinced it was a fearful and 
unclean thing, found familiarity breed content in- 
stead of contempt, for it presently developed into 
a desire to ride therein. Thereafter, he became 
an unconscious emissary of civilisation, who was 
never weary of detailing his experiences, and the 
incentive for others to follow in his bold footsteps. 
The railways of India are probably the most 
crowded with passenger traffic of any in the world, 
and not one man in a hundred thousand of those 
who use them to-day would have met, travelled, 



12 Indian Life 

and rubbed shoulders forty years ago. The same 
may of course be said of any country or continent; 
but, as we shall presently see, the act of * ' rubbing 
shoulders" implies far more in India than in any 
other part of the world. 

I have endeavoured to show by a rapid survey 
the varying peoples which the Empire contains, 
but the point is one which will bear a little more 
detailed treatment, especially as the scope of this 
book does not admit of enlargement on it here- 
after. The main division of the inhabitants is 
based on religion. They are divided into Hindus, 
and Mahomedans, the former numbering (roughly 
speaking) a hundred and eighty millions, and the 
latter sixty. The cleavage of ideas, morals, man- 
ners, and characteristics between them is as abso- 
lute as between either of them and Europeans, or 
between Turks and Christians in South-Eastern 
Europe. 

The Mahomedans are the descendants of the 
Moslem invaders who, for a thousand years, 
poured into India from the West, and established 
kingdoms and dynasties of their own, which found 
a zenith in the Mogul Empire. Its fall left the 
country dotted with Mahomedan principalities 
usurped by the Viceroys who had broken free 
from the Imperial authority. Inheritors of such 
a history, it is only natural that the Mahomedans 
should retain the instincts of a conquering class, 
and any turbulence or unrest generally arises in 
communities of that faith. 



India As It Is 13 

The downfall of the Mogul was followed by a 
convulsion of war and conquest, the beginning of 
which marked the establishment of British power 
in India, and the end saw two thirds of it under 
England's direct rule, and the remainder tribu- 
tary to her. In that portion, she has kept her 
hands off the only considerable Mahomedan states 
— those of Hyderabad and Bhawalpur, and the 
Mahomedan territory of Cashmere, ruled by a 
Hindu dynasty. The Hindu states include My- 
sore, Travancore, and those governed by Mah- 
ratta, Rajpoot, and Sikh rulers. 

The British territory is divided into six large 
provinces — ^Bengal, Bombay, Madras, the North- 
West Provinces and Oudh, the Punjab, and Bur- 
mah — and eight smaller ones, administered by 
Governors, Lieutenant-Governors, Chief-Com- 
missioners and Agents to the Governor-General, 
the whole under the Viceroy, who represents the 
King-Kmperor, and has been described as His 
Majesty's Greatest Subject. These provinces in- 
clude what were once the high and puissant king- 
doms of the Subahdar of Bengal, the Nawab of 
the Camatic, the Peshwa of the Mahrattas, the 
Kmperor of Delhi (more commonly known as the 
Great Mogul), the King of Oudh, the Maharajah of 
the Punjab, the King of Burmah, and the Ameers 
of Sind. All these were in their day potentates of 
the first magnitude in the estimation of their con- 
temporaries; many of them the Knglish sued for 
favours. These dynasties have been irrevocably 



14 Indian Life 

destroyed by British conquest and annexation — 
wiped out of existence as completely as Poland. 

Besides these two leading religious denomina- 
tions into which India has been broadly divided, 
there are several other smaller ones to be taken 
into consideration. Some of them are very in- 
teresting and curious. The wild aboriginal tribes, 
who declined conversion to Hinduism when the 
great Aryan invasion swept over the country, 
number about ten millions. Buddhism is pro- 
fessed by another ten millions, chiefly resident in 
Burmah, whilst a third ten millions in the Punjab 
follow the Sikh faith. The Sikhs are a sect apart, 
and sprang into existence in quite recent times, 
comparatively speaking. The purity of their 
tenets, their tolerance, and the cleanliness of their 
lives contrast favourably with the Hindus and 
Mahomedans from whom they sprang. Like the 
latter, they admit proselytes to their religion, but 
no one who is not born one can become a Hindu. 
The Jains, numbering about two millions, repre- 
sent the survival of Buddhism in Western India, 
and are a peculiar people who may be likened to 
Quakers. Their religion directs them to do no 
harm to any living thing, and to desire nothing 
inordinately. As a class they have prospered 
amazingly, and many of the wealthiest bankers in 
India belong to this persuasion. The Parsis loom 
large in the British eye, and Bethnal Green has 
selected one to represent it at St. Stephen's. They 
are an alien folk who emigrated from Persia into 



India As It Is 15 

Western India, and only number about a hundred 
thousand. Their position in the country is purely 
commercial, but they have the genius of the Jews 
and the shrewdness of the Scotch. On the Mala- 
bar coast there are two interesting races in the 
Moplahs, descended from the Arabs trading to 
those parts in remote times, and a small but ex- 
ceedingly curious community of Jews, who retain 
the customs and characteristics of the Chosen 
People, and their ancient faith, although so long 
and completely cut off from their co-religionists. 
They lay claim to be the lost tribes, as also do the 
Afghans of the north-west frontier, whose Semitic 
cast of countenance is very marked. In the ex- 
treme south of India, St. Francis Xavier's con- 
verts teem in thousands, still professing the 
Roman Catholic faith, and there is a Nestorian 
community whose conversion is ascribed to St. 
Thomas the Apostle. .As regards the purely 
heathen forms of worship, the Todas and other 
wild races still sacrifice to their gods in the 
jungles, where they dwell shy and secluded. 
There are two divisions of the Mahomedans, cor- 
responding to the Roman and Anglo-Catholics of 
Christianity, and exclusive of a fanatical ofishoot 
known as Wahabis. Hinduism is divided into an 
infinity of sects. And, finally, it may surprise 
the reader to learn that in this subject-land, where 
men are reckoned by the million and the hundred 
million, there are less than a hundred and fifty 
thousand English, and about the same number of 



1 6 Indian Life 

EJurasians, or half-castes, of whom a proportion 
are descended from Portuguese. 

It will thus be seen that religion divides this 
complex country almost as much as race and lan- 
guage. Intermarriage between the different peo- 
ples and religions is absolutely unknown, and 
with the fall of the Mogul Kmpire proselytism 
ceased to exist, and the only persons systemat- 
ically seeking to convert others to their creed 
are the Christian missionaries. 

Social exclusiveness is the universal rule in In- 
dia, and in a country filled with varying elements 
there is no commingling of them. The Indian 
peoples are organically antagonistic to amalgama- 
tion in any shape or form, and hold themselves as 
distinct from one another in their social and do- 
mestic relations as do the different species of ani- 
mals. It is due to this that they have managed 
to preserve intact their respective individualities 
through so many centuries, and hence it happens 
that the country generalised as " India " is really 
a congeries of separate nations, and " Our Neigh- 
bour the Indian " the cosmopolitan personage he 
has been described. 





CHAPTER II 

THK Knglisliman has sometimes been accused 
of insularity. If so be it is true, you would 
have to take your definition from archipelago to 
obtain a term for the corresponding quality in the 
Hindu of India. For the system of caste has cut 
him up into a thousand little bits of exclusiveness, 
each instinct with insularity reduced ad absurdum. 

Caste is a great social organisation which gov- 
erns and directs the Hindu in every aspect and 
action of his daily life. He is born with it; he 
cannot change it; and he has oftentimes sacrificed 
his life rather than * ' break ' ' it. It is the very 
breath of his nostrils. To preserve his caste is the 
be-all and the end-all of his career in this world; 
to break it is worse than the commission of any 
criminal offence. He will perjure himself and 
steal cheerfully, he will maim and murder with- 
out compunction, but the most abandoned villain 
will respect the laws of his caste, and yield blind 
obedience to its rules. 

Notwithstanding that it is unreasonable and 
unreasoning, unjust, arbitrary, and cruel, caste is 

2 

17 



1 8 Indian Life 

a great moral force. The average native will lie 
about everything except his caste; it is a restrain- 
ing influence on his life, and has introduced a 
code of conduct (however misguided) into a char- 
acter whose moral conceptions would otherwise 
permit it to run riot. There are those who de- 
claim against caste, and would sweep it away — 
notably the missionary; there are "advanced 
natives " who declare that it is the real obstacle to 
progress in India, and has brought civilisation to 
a standstill; but, as one of them naively admits, 
*' the majority of those who denounce it are men 
whom it has virtually repudiated." In practice 
you have only to see the result of deprivation of 
caste in an individual to realise how great is his 
moral fall when the Hindu is '' outcasted." He 
is like an officer who has been cashiered, or a 
priest unfrocked; a " rank bad 'un " who has lost 
all sense of self-respect, however superficial it 
might have been. 

There are four fundamental divisions of caste 
— the priestly or Brahmin, the warrior, the trad- 
ing, and the labouring — and these, again, are 
divided into sub-sections numbering some thou- 
sands. Caste is a purely Hindu institution; there 
is no " caste ' ' in the sense in which we are ex- 
amining it amongst the Mahomedans, Buddhists, 
Sikhs, and other non-Hindu races, and even 
amongst the Hindus themselves, there is a sub- 
stratum below the labouring caste which has 
none at all, and is termed Pariah, or outcaste. 



Caste 19 

The Brahmin, or priest, is a gilt-edged in- 
dividual, who neither toils nor spins. There are 
twenty millions of Brahmins who represent heredi- 
tary holiness, and to flatter, feast, and fee whom 
is the bounden duty of all good Hindus of inferior 
birth. Manu, the lawgiver of Hinduism, who 
flourished five hundred years before Christ, as- 
signed to the Brahmins the '* duty " of receiving 
gifts," and declared them by right of birth the 
lords of creation, through whose benevolence the 
rest of the community enjoyed what they were 
permitted to possess. The Brahmins have lived 
up to the privileges conferred on them, with an un- 
deviating exactitude during the last twenty-four 
centuries, and their influence is still enormous. 
They are the brain-power as well as the blood- 
suckers of Hinduism; the Jesuits of the East. 
They bless, curse, absolve, expound, teach, pre- 
dict, decide, and govern. Ceremonial purification 
is their monopoly, a most valuable one in the caste 
system. They are the " Zadkiel's Almanack," 
"Ready Reckoner," '* Kveryman's own Law- 
yer," " Enquire Within for Everything," and 
Encyclopcedia Britannica, in the social and do- 
mestic life of the Hindu. When in doubt, the 
Hindu pays a Brahmin. 

The warrior's caste has fallen on evil days since 
the Arms Act deprived him of his sword, and the 
Pax Britannica of the opportunity to use it. His 
occupation is gone, for only a fraction of him can 
find employment in the native armies. But he 



20 Indian Life 

swirls his bamboo staff, so to speak, tells how his 
ancestors fought in the good old days of foray and 
rapine, and retains a fierce way of twirling his 
moustachios. For the rest he has degenerated 
into an agriculturist, who ekes out a living from 
the soil. It is a sad come-down for a man who 
was a famous swashbuckler and fire-eater in his 
day. 

On the other hand, the trading caste has thriven 
under the dominion of a nation of shopkeepers. 
Time was when, like the Jews in England, they 
knew what it was to have sound teeth extracted. 
They keep their teeth in their heads now, and be- 
gin to show them. Especially the money-lenders, 
who are a distinct power in the land; for much of 
it is mortgaged to them, and they are rack-renters, 
more hated than absentee landlords in Ireland. 
It has often been shrewdly said that if there were 
another rebellion in India the first thing to be 
consigned to the flames would be the books and 
archives of the usurers. 

As for the labourer he is what he ever was, a 
mechanical, patient, ambitionless toiler, whom 
nor conquests nor social revolutions can put out 
of gear. He bows his head and bends his back 
and struggles along in the old groove, using the 
same primitive tools as his ancestors and employ- 
ing the same crude methods. The crusted con- 
servatism of this caste is second only to that of 
the Brahmins. The pride of the priest finds its 
counterpoise in the humility of the proletariat, 




% 




Caste 21 

and between them they demonstrate the maxi- 
mum degrees of dignity and degradation. 

The Pariah you can hardly include in Hindu- 
ism, though he has his degrees. He dwindles off 
into the scavenger, who is merely a sanitary ma- 
chine, performing the functions of a drainpipe. 
And yet, absurd though it may appear, the Pariah 
pretends to have a caste of his own, and is quite 
pedantic in keeping it, and cases are not un- 
common where, outcaste himself, he proceeds to 
*' outcaste " his erring brother! The species thus 
arrived at is something lower than the missing-link. 

All these castes are hereditary. A priest's son 
is a priest; a soldier's a soldier; a carpenter's a 
carpenter; a scavenger's a scavenger. There is no 
question of ' ' What shall we do with our boys ? ' ' 
in Hinduism; that problem has been solved in ad- 
vance for two thousand years. For a sire to start 
his son in any other calling but his own would be 
" against his caste," and there all argument ends. 
For caste is both social and religious, and includes 
the calling as well as the creed. 

The requirements and restrictions of caste are 
innumerable. Many of them are arbitrary, in- 
consistent, and even contradictory. The princi- 
pal laws direct that individuals shall marry only 
those of their own caste, eat with their own caste, 
and of food cooked by a caste-fellow or a Brah- 
min; that no superior shall allow one of inferior 
caste to touch his cooked food, or even enter 
the room in which it is being cooked; but articles 



22 Indian Life 

of a dry nature, such as rice, grain, and so forth, 
are exempt from defilement by touch so long as 
they remain dry. Water and other liquids are 
peculiarly susceptible to contamination, but riv- 
ers, reservoirs, and ponds are excepted. The 
higher and * ' clean ' ' castes are not allowed to 
touch the lower or outcastes; even the brushing 
of garments in passing is reckoned defilement, 
and the shadow of the inferior is considered un- 
clean. There are several prohibited articles of I 
food, such as the flesh of kine, swine, and fowls, 
the eating or touching of which entails defilement. 
A person may not cross the ocean or any of the 
boundaries of India without being outcasted. 
Marriage with a widow entails similar excom- 
munication, as does immorality in females. The 
immoral connections of men are not visited with 
retribution, though theoretically reprobated. Em- 
bracing Christianity or Mahomedanism ipso facto 
leads to exclusion from caste. 

The punishment of being outcasted may be de- 
scribed as a blend of boycotting and ecclesiastical 
excommunication. The backslider's friends and 
relatives refuse to partake of his hospitality or 
grant him theirs; they will not eat, drink, or 
smoke with him, which are far more significant 
acts than as comprehended in our social philo- 
sophy. They decline to marry his children, or 
give him theirs in marriage, and if he have a mar- 
ried daughter she is debarred from visiting him. 
Those important functionaries, the priest, barber, 



Caste 23 

and washerman, refuse to serve him. All con- 
nection with him is completely severed, and no 
one will assist him even at the funeral of a mem- 
ber of his family, which, in a land where there are 
no undertakers and no hearses even for the richest, 
lands him in a parlous predicament. It is ab- 
solute social ostracism. 

Reinstatement in caste is possible in most cases 
after going through a ceremony of purification, 
which consists in swallowing a mixture com- 
pounded of the products and excrements of the 
cow, feasting an assemblage of caste-brethren, and 
feeing the Brahmins. The latter, you may be 
sure, are always to the fore, and their services are 
constantly required for ceremonial purification to 
atone for slight lapses or accidental slips, each and 
every one of which needs its expiatory procedure. 
The cow is a most sacred animal, — it can purge 
from sin and lead the way to a better world. 
When a Hindu is dying, he is always lifted from 
his bed and laid on mother earth, and in many 
places, the tail of a cow is guided into his faltering 
grasp that it may pull him to heaven. There was 
an old cow on my plantation in India that had 
performed this serviceable function for a hundred 
moribund coolies! 

I have called caste inconsistent and contradic- 
tory, and here are a few illustrations. A caste 
which is accounted " clean " in one part of India 
may be held contrariwise in another, as for in- 
stance, the potters; the Brahmins and Rajpoots of 



24 Indian Life 

Northern India eat the flesh of the wild pig with- 
out sustaining any pollution, though such an act 
would render them liable to the severest damna- 
tory penalties in Bengal. The eye is winked at 
a rich Hindu who keeps a Mahomedan mistress, 
which would undoubtedly fix him with utter con- 
demnation did he marry a widow of his own 
caste. A man may sit on his fence and see the 
land ploughed, and urge the ploughman to goad 
the team, as he often does, and yet may not plough 
himself, because that entails driving the bullocks, 
which are sacred animals. A Brahmin may eat 
sweetmeats or wheat with men of the warrior or 
trading castes, but not rice, for that is supposed 
to admit equality. He may blackmail a man of 
the labouring caste for food to take home with 
him to cook, but must on no account eat it in that 
individual's house. The "clean castes" habit- 
ually wear shoes made out of the skins of cattle, 
yet would be defiled by the mere touch of the hide, 
or of the tanner, or the shoemaker who made the 
shoes. The * ' bearer ' ' or valet who waits upon 
an English master is often of the highest caste; 
he may make the bed, prepare the bath, and at- 
tend to all the personal wants of his Sahib, but 
not bring him his food. The Hindu who tends 
your cows and sheep would revolt at the sugges- 
tion of grooming your horse or giving your cham- 
pion-bred Knglish fox-terrier a bath. The former 
duty is the function of a low-caste man, whilst 
only the scavengers may deal with dogs, which 



Caste 25 

are held to be but one degree less defiling than 
swine. Per cojitra, the cat is sacred, and the 
monkey holy. I suppose there is no filthier coin 
in the whole wide world than the India copper 
anna. It is often greasy with the foulest dirt and 
grimy with bits of sticky tobacco, into whose com- 
position treacle enters more largely than rum and 
molasses into naval plugs. But it is cleaner than 
the low-caste man who tenders it, notwithstand- 
ing he may be a washerman, and engaged in 
his avocation! His touch defiles the Brahmin, 
but the copper does not. Where other nations 
purify buildings with a coat of limewash, the 
Hindu plasters them with cow-dung, which is the 
universal disinfectant of this people who may not 
sit down to a meal without a preliminary bath. 

But the exclusiveness of caste extends much 
further than this. In the ordinary transactions of 
life, when money passes between a low-caste and 
a high-caste man, the coin is thrown on the 
ground by the one and picked up by the other for 
fear of defilement; they may not stand on the 
same carpet or enter the same room. The low- 
caste man must not cross the threshold of his 
superior's house or hut; if he wants to attract his 
attention, or communicate with him, he stands 
outside and bawls. In some parts of India, the 
sight of a Brahmin coming down the highway 
used to be the signal for men of lesser degree to 
clear off it. There are scores of these unclean 
castes, who are, however, superior to Pariahs. I 



26 Indian Life 

may instance shoemakers, tanners, grooms, 
washermen, publicans, or spirit-sellers and distil- 
lers, basket-makers, weavers (in some parts held 
to be a ** clean" caste), gipsies, and several 
others. No high-caste Hindu is safe in the pres- 
ence of a stranger until he has asked him, ' * Who 
are you?" The answer places them at once in 
their proper social relation to one another, for, as 
I have said, caste is the one thing about which a 
native of India will not lie. 

Conceive the shackles this imposes upon inter- 
course! What would life be if we had to consider 
of every person we met in the streets, "Is he 
touchable ? " of every man we sat down next to 
in a restaurant, " Is it lawful to sit at meat with 
him ? ' ' For you must know that this caste prej u- 
dice is not merely disinclination or disgust, but an 
absolute moral law, which makes transgression an 
admitted abomination. It is as though a draper 
by accepting an invitation to dinner from a boot- 
maker laid himself open to expulsion from his 
chapel, and social ostracism by his brother drap- 
ers, whilst, if he fell in love with the bootmaker's 
lovely daughter and married her, his lot must be 
eternal exclusion from the draper's paradise. Lo- 
cate those tradesmen in India, and I assure you 
that is what would happen. If, under similar 
conditions, one can conceive a bishop marrying a 
major-general's daughter, he would infallibly lose 
his bishopric and be boycotted. 

Caste is respected in the jails of India, where 



Caste 27 

the prisoners of high caste are provided with their 
own cooks and water-carriers. The Brahmin 
felon has every respect paid to his prejudices, but 
— and this is where the rub comes in — when j^ou 
get to the third-class railway carriage you over- 
ride even such a tough obstacle as caste. Into it 
are bundled Brahmin and Pariah; they sit on the 
same seat; they rub shoulders who might not 
mingle shadows. *' You must drop your caste," 
says the railway, " if you want to travel at a far- 
thing a mile ' ' ; and it is dropped — to be resumed 
again outside the station. 

The Hindu cannot change his caste, though he 
may be expelled from it; his social status is fixed 
for ever at his birth, and he can only fall, never 
rise. Wealth cannot affect it, and this has tended 
to make the Hindus an ambitionless race. Nor 
can poverty derogate. There are hosts of Brah- 
min beggars who, not even in the extremity of 
starvation, would feed at the same table with some 
of the greatest princes, who, although they may 
rule over great territories, are by the standard 
of caste unclean. As you may find a swineherd 
dynasty in Europe, so in Hindustan there are 
ruling chiefs who are no more gentlefolk by 
birthright than the English would consider pub- 
licans and grooms to be. But whereas in the 
West it is possible for these to emerge from their 
low degree, in the East they are ever fettered to it 
by the chain of caste. 

I have known only one instance of a Hindu 



28 Indian Life 

trying to emancipate himself from caste. It was 
the case of a Rajah, who was a member of one of 
those low castes which are held to be unclean in a 
minor degree. He expended untold wealth in 
purchasing a beggar girl of high caste, and brib- 
ing her relatives and the Brahmins to sanction 
and perform a marriage ceremony between them. 
When she had become his wife, literally trans- 
lated from the hut to the palace, and borne him a 
son, his courtiers put forward the claim that the 
son was of the same caste as his mother, and that 
as the Rajah had a high-caste son and a high- 
caste wife, he must be a high caste himself. It 
was a piece of impudent and shallow pleading that 
imposed on nobody, and created a great scandal, 
because it was done with the connivance of Brit- 
ish officials. " This could never have happened 
under the rule of our own Rajahs," complained 
the caste that had been dishonoured; for caste is 
accounted a brotherhood, and a slur of that sort 
affected every member of it. Amongst men of 
the same caste the appellation ' ' brother ' ' is uni- 
versal. And in this case, the whole caste, which 
happened to be a small one, was subjected to 
much taunt and insolence for the backsliding of 
the few recreants who had been bribed to give 
their assent to the mesalliance. ** Brother-in-law 
of a publican! " was the favourite form of abuse; 
a publican being an ''untouchable" man, and 
* ' brother-in-law ' ' capable of a peculiarly offen- 
sive and insulting undermeaning. The Rajah 



Caste 29 

still hugs the delusion, fostered by his fawning 
and sycophantic courtiers, that he has ascended 
into the higher scale; but outside his palace there 
is not a man of high caste that would accept a 
drink of water from his hands. 

Caste is as strict and particular in its alliances 
as Royalty. It admits of no intermarriage, and 
as, in practice, every Hindu is married, this hard 
and fast rule bears on the whole population. The 
obligation to see his children married is a matter 
which presses harder on the native than anything 
else. In the first place, it costs a great deal of 
money, and often keeps the parents impoverished 
for years. In some of the castes, large sums have 
to be paid to the bridegroom for his condescen- 
sion; in other castes, chiefly the lower ones, wives 
have to be purchased. There are Kulin Brahmins 
who make a livelihood by matrimony, scores of 
damsels being wedded to them for their sanctity's 
sake, as unattractive widows were sometimes 
sealed to Mormon elders. With the consumma- 
tion of the marriage, the attentions of the husband 
cease, and the bride resides in her father's house 
permanently. In the Rajpoot, which is the lead- 
ing warrior caste, it is necessary for the girls to 
marry into a grade or section higher than their 
father's. When you get to the top of this tree 
you will find thousands of spinsters for whom 
there are literally no husbands available. To 
have an unmarried daughter after she has reached 
the age of puberty is worse than a disgrace, it is 



30 Indian Life 

a crime in the morality of the Hindus. Where 
the wives have to be purchased, the price often 
approximates two or three years' income of the 
bridegroom's father. India is a land of universal 
indebtedness, and the greater portion of the lia- 
bility is incurred in fulfilling the obligation of the 
customs relating to marriage. 

Within the last thirty years, caste has received 
many rude jars, and is much less strictly observed 
in the centres which Western civilisation has 
pierced. Railways, tramways, schools, dispen- 
saries, and similar institutions, which are open to 
all, have had a great levelling effect. In the met- 
ropolitan cities, liberalism has advanced by strides. 
The water supply of Calcutta brought the Hindu 
face to face with one of the cardinal articles of his 
creed, which prohibited him from using any water 
drawn from a source touched, and hence polluted, 
by outcastes. The Brahmins were equal to the 
occasion, and a special dispensation was granted, 
though the ordinances of caste were manifestly 
violated. With the spread of education and the 
establishment of schools, the same question pre- 
sented itself in a less acute form, and the high 
castes swallowed their pride and sent their sons to 
learn in the same schoolroom as their inferiors. 
Kven in the jungles, a subtle change is creeping 
in. I have observed, in my own experience, in a 
district situated seventy miles from the nearest 
railway, a distinct diminution of caste prejudice. 
Here are three straws of illustration showing 



• Caste 31 

which way the wind blows; I remember them be- 
cause by a coincidence the first scene in each hap- 
pened on the same day and drew from me some 
rather impatient observations about caste. It was 
in the 'seventies, and I was out snipe-shooting, 
and, having taken off my wet boots, ordered one 
of my coolies to carry them; he refused point 
blank, because it was against his caste. A little 
later, I asked another to hand me a flask of whisky 
from my tiffin-basket; he called to the groom (a 
low-caste man) to do so, on the plea that he would 
break his caste by touching anything so unclean 
as Glenlivet. On my retHrn home, a third man 
asked me for some quinine to cure his fever; I 
mixed him a dose with water, whereat he shook 
his head and declined anything except the dry 
powder. In the 'nineties. No. i, who had blos- 
somed into my bearer, had special charge of my 
boots. He was a Mian, or Rajpoot nobleman by 
caste, and the other servants used habitually to 
address him as " My I,ord," and touch his feet 
with their hands before salaaming to him as a 
mark of extra respect. No. 2 had so far overcome 
his prejudices that I caught him drinking my 
whisky. And as for No. 3 and the " dry " medi- 
cine theor}^ all objections to potions had ceased 
long before that decade, and rum and chloradyne 
had become a really popular dram! 

As instances of the advance of civilisation and 
the surrender of caste prejudices, I will particu- 
larise four other things which have become fairly 



32 Indian Life 

popular in India, at any rate where the line of rail 
runs and the inhabitants are not in jungle dark- 
ness. They are, soda-water, ice, umbrellas, and 
kerosene-oil lamps. At the first blush, they may 
appear absurd illustrations, but more lies behind 
them than is apparent on the surface. Soda- 
water has always been regarded as an Knglish 
drink; its vernacular name is "English water," 
and that alone would be sufficient to condemn it 
in the eyes of caste. And yet you may see it 
hawked about the streets and railway stations 
and sold in the bazaars. This betokens a revolu- 
tion in religious sentiment, for the typhoid germs 
which Western nations believe to lurk in foul 
water are not so dreaded as the spiritual pollution 
the pious Hindu conceives he must be subjected 
to by the use of the purest, ay, of distilled, water, 
touched by a Christian. In the same way with 
ice, essentially an Knglish luxury, and utterly 
foreign to the native of India. There are ice- 
factories in most of the large towns in the country, 
and you may often see an Aryan brother sucking 
away at his farthing's worth quite complacently. 
It is a luxury that has entered into native life 
within the last few years, as the tomato and ban- 
ana have in the West. But whilst such innova- 
tions mean nothing to the Anglo-Saxon, except 
an increase of his blessings, they imply the snap- 
ping of another link in the fetters of caste. My 
bearer aforesaid, who declined the boots, came in 
after years habitually to pilfer my snow, in which 



Caste 33 

were laid to cool such abominations as tinned 
brawn made of calves' heads, the very mention of 
which would have sent him flying to holy Gunga 
twenty years before. (And I may here paren- 
thetically mention that in the hill district in which 
I lived, on the slopes of the Himalayas, I was al- 
ways able to get a load of snow down from the 
mountains, even in the hottest weather, though 
the mercury might register 103 degrees in my 
verandah!) 

With regard to umbrellas, thereby hangs an- 
other tale. The umbrella was as great a sign of 
presumed gentility in India as a silk hat and pair 
of gloves in London. When I first went to India, 
thirty years ago, a rising native thought twice be- 
fore committing himself to the responsibilities of 
carrying an umbrella, and it was the etiquette to 
furl it in the presence of a superior. I have seen 
old Anglo-Indians of the pre-Mutiny period al- 
most go into a fit because in passing strange na- 
tives on the high-road they were not complimented 
with the umbrella respectfully lowered. But in 
those days umbrellas were costly articles : in these 
they are turned out at a price which enables them 
to be sold by the million at something under a 
shilling. The consequence is that a remarkable 
demand has sprung up for them, and you will see a 
man, whose sole raiment is a bit of cloth wrapped 
about his loins, swaggering about under the shade 
of a chuttree. As for putting it down in the pres- 
ence of a superior, that is a piece of politeness 



34 Indian Life 

which has quite passed out of vogue. I can only 
compare the social elevation this implies to, let 
me say, artisans in England taking to, driving 
in hansom cabs because, by some unexplained 
process, they plied at penny fares. Even that 
would hardly meet the case, for whereas, riding 
in a hansom is not forbidden to the proletariat, 
the carrying of an umbrella would have been con- 
sidered a piece of public impertinence twenty years 
ago on the part of the great majority of natives, 
who now habitually sport them under the stimulus 
of Western cheapness of production. The sub- 
jection insisted on by caste is chronically flaunted 
by the display, by the lower orders of India, of 
what is, really, an insignia of respectability. 

lyastly, we come to mineral-oil lamps. In an 
age when artificial illumination has been brought 
to a high stage of perfection, we are apt to forget 
what a civilising agent gas was in the beginning 
of the nineteenth century, and how it revolution- 
ised social life. India has for countless ages been 
content with the dim gloom, after nightfall, pro- 
vided by a cotton wick, burning in an open dish 
of vegetable oil; a smelling, smoking flame, only 
one degree better than the tallow candles by the 
light of which the English, less than a century 
ago, were accustomed to illuminate their houses. 
The introduction of the kerosene-oil lamp, with 
its glass chimney (invariably made in Germany), 
into the bazaars of the East is the thin end of that 
wedge which betokens that sunset shall no longer 



Caste 



35 



be the practical limit of the working-day, and 
promises to open extended hours of labour and 
recreation to the teeming millions of India, to 
whom, hitherto, night has meant idleness or 
gossip. But this is rather an innovation of cus- 
tom than of caste, and of custom I shall deal more 
particularly in the next chapter. 




CHAPTER III 

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 

MANY hundreds of volumes have been written 
descriptive of the idiosyncrasies of the peo- 
ples of India, whose civilisation is a compound of 
unpleasant manners and incomprehensible cus- 
toms, as judged by Western standards, and pre- 
sents to the English mind a source of perpetual 
bewilderment. Open-mouthed wonder is the per- 
manent attitude for many months of the new 
arrival in that strange country. To attempt any 
regular and ordered survey of the subject within 
the limits of a chapter would be like trying to 
enumerate the streets of I^ondon on the back of a 
visiting card. In default, I propose to jog the 
kaleidoscope of my recollection and present the 
result in the hope that chance may flash a more 
graphic suggestion here and there than I could 
accomplish by any attempt at a nutshell catalogue 
of the subject. 

India is a country where the climate takes the 

place of the costumier, and the population goes 

unclad. This is the first thing that arrests the 

Western eye, with its suggestion of indescribable 

36 



Manners and Customs 37 

indelicacy, where the ordinary dress of a man ap- 
proximates a pair of bathing-drawers, and the 
women veil their faces and display their legs. 

It is a country where politeness requires the 
feet to be naked, but the head covered on entering 
a room, a bare poll being a sign of self-abasement, 
and his turban as necessar}'^ to the native's sense 
of respect as a pair of breeches to an Englishman. 
Take a native unawares with his puggarie off, and 
the first thing he does is to adjust it hurriedly. 
Catch a native woman en deshabillSy and she cares 
for nothing except to veil her face. 

It is a country where everybody habitually sits 
on the ground and eats off the floor, and throws 
away the food that cannot be eaten at a meal, and 
often the crockery ware after once using it; where 
it is forbidden to eat with the shoes on, and cus- 
tomary, in not a few castes, to strip naked for 
dinner; where three men out of four consider beef- 
eating worse than cannibalism; and the fourth 
is morally convinced that a ham-sandwich could 
send him to hell; where vegetarianism is the rule, 
and never an ^gg is used in cooking; where there 
are a hundred sweetmeat shops to one public- 
house, and a native restaurant is an absolutely 
unknown thing; where every one smokes, but the 
same pipe travels from mouth to mouth; where 
every one washes, but no one uses soap; where 
not one man in ten, and not one woman in a 
hundred and fifty, can read. 

A country where boys are husbands before they 



38 Indian Life 

have shed their baby teeth, and brides are mar- 
ried in their cradles occasionally; where there are 
no unmarried girls under fourteen, and many 
widows of half that age; where there is no court- 
ing before marriage, and a husband may not no- 
tice his wife in public, nor a wife so much as 
pronounce her husband's name; where husbands 
and wives cannot travel in the same railway car- 
riage third-class; where you never see a ** lady " 
in the streets, and to address one would be con- 
sidered a gross insult. 

A country where more men shave their heads 
than their chins, and widows are compelled to go 
bald (though in this conjunction we may recall to 
mind that less than a hundred years ago widowed 
ladies in England customarily had their heads 
shaved, and wore wigs in order to supply the de- 
ficiency); where wives wear a nose-ring in token 
of being in a state of subjection to their husbands; 
where there is sorrow over a daughter's birth, and 
rejoicing, or at least satisfaction, over a widow's 
death; where a man may have four legal wives, 
and, in some castes, a woman four legal husbands, 
if they are brothers. 

A country where venomous snakes kill thou- 
sands of human beings annually, and yet are 
venerated; where the powdered liver of a tiger is 
a specific to instil courage; where the tails and 
manes of white horses are painted pink to im- 
prove their appearance, and a wall-eyed brute 
is considered peculiarly beautiful; where most 



Manners and Customs 39 

wheeled vehicles are drawn by bullocks, and no 
other animals used for ploughing; where many 
people keep goats, and very few poultry, and no 
one keeps a dog. 

A country which has no Sunday observance; 
no poor-houses, poor-rates, or poor-law; no places 
of entertainment or national pastimes ; no public 
institutions except temples and mosques; no pub- 
lic opinion; no political privileges; no representa- 
tion, and no Members of Parliament. 

A country where beggars are accounted holy, 
and * * ballet girls ' ' of loose morals held in high 
esteem; where the priests countenance prostitu- 
tion, and often live on its proceeds; where incon- 
tinence is not held to be a vice in married men, 
and religion teaches its votaries to hate, despise, 
and grind down their less fortunate neighbours; 
where equality in the eyes of the law is unknown, 
and the killing of some human beings is accounted 
a far less serious crime than the slaughter of a 
cow; where women are treated as creatures born 
for the gratification of man, and '' a man's a man 
for a' that." 

This sample is like a handful drawn at chance 
from a sack of wheat, but each grain is a solid 
fact, and there are thousands more like them. 
Wherefore I say that the attitude of the new ar- 
rival in making himself acquainted with India is 
one of open-mouthed wonder, not unfrequently 
stiffened with a strong dash of disgust. 

And now a few words of general description of 



40 Indian Life 

the people who adopt these manners and customs. 
The Hindu first. Patience and thrift are his pre- 
dominant virtues, instilled into him in the hard 
school of subjection, long-suffering, and poverty. 
He is docile to servility, especially when anything 
is to be gained by it. Except in the lower castes, 
he is sobriety typified, and, indeed, by far the 
major part of the population of India is qualified 
to wear the blue ribbon of temperance. He has 
industry of a sort that is not very energetic, for he 
distinctly dislikes physical exertion, and none of 
his few recreations comprehend bodily exercise. 
Sleeping, smoking, and eating sweetmeats would 
enable him to get through an ideal bank holiday. 
He cannot be commended as a husband, for cus- 
tom makes him barbarous and discourteous from 
a Western point of view, but he is an affectionate 
father. On the other hand, he is narrow-minded, 
parsimonious, and avaricious; cheats and lies by 
the light of nature; and the word * * money ' ' is 
assuredly more often on his lips than any other in 
his vocabulary. He is cunning and contentious 
in argument, and his intellectual powers, when 
educated, are capable of considerable development. 
In this respect he puts the Englishman to shame, 
and were all posts in the Indian Government 
thrown open to examination in India, we should 
probably see the administration filled with Ben- 
gali Baboos and Mahratta Brahmins. The grati- 
tude of the Hindu is in inverse ratio to his greed, 
and his proverbial mildness prevents any manli- 



Manners and Customs 41 

ness. Although he worships a variety of animals, 
the meaning of cruelty to them is outside his com- 
prehension. The Indian ox, which is sacred in 
theory, is perhaps the most ill-used and over- 
worked beast of servitude in the world. The 
Hindu is callous of suJGFering, to the point of want- 
ing to make you kick him. He will not take life, 
but he will watch it, unmoved, dying by inches 
in agony. 

The Mahomedan is a far more virile personality 
than the Hindu. He is free from the cramping 
influence of caste, but his bigotry makes up for 
it. He has been termed *' devout," but I think 
he gets his religion by gusts, which often lead to 
fanaticism. The self-imposed lycnten penances of 
the Catholic faith fade into triviality compared 
with the way in which the majority of Mahomed- 
ans mortify the flesh during the month of fasting, 
when not a particle of food, drink, or smoke passes 
their lips between sunrise and sunset. The Ma- 
homedan is manly and proud on the one hand, 
and indolent and dissipated on the other. He is 
a spendthrift when he has money to squander, 
and in this respect compares with a Hindu as an 
Irishman with a Scotchman. The descendant of 
a conquering race, and the inheritor of a great 
history, he has something of the Spaniard in him, 
and lives more in the traditions of the past than 
in the achievements of the present. At times, 
when he sees his opportunity, he is turbulent and 
disorderly. His fortunes have fallen low under 



42 Indian Life 

British rule, and he is impatient of the fact. The 
British eye him with suspicion, and they, ''Kafirs" 
in his esteem, keep him down on the same low 
level as the Hindu unbelievers, whom, in his 
secret soul, he despises only one degree more than 
he does them. Here and there, where he takes to 
trade, the Mahomedan thrives, but he lacks the 
patience and thrift of the Hindu, and commerce 
is foreign to his genius. Intellectuallj^ he is on a 
lower scale than the Aryan, but his unbounded 
self-esteem enables him to carry his head higher, 
and gain some advantage from his competitor. 
He is a tyrannical husband, a doting father, and 
can be socially a very good fellow if he likes, dis- 
playing courtesy and frankness of character. But 
he is a decaying influence in the land, and no- 
thing short of a miracle can restore him to his 
former pedestal. In the economy of government, 
he supplies a useful counterbalance to the aspir- 
ing Hindu races, who, having once experienced 
his yoke, are not likely to invite it again. Be- 
tween Mahomedan and Hindu there lurks an an- 
tipathy too deep-rooted ever to be eradicated, and, 
in their mutual hatred and distrust, we honest men 
continue to hold by our own with tolerable ease. 

The Sikhs are a provincial folk, yet free from 
provincialism in the sense of being small-minded. 
Amongst all the native races they stand out as 
liberal-minded and capital citizens. There is a 
nobility about their national character which you 
seek for in vain amongst Mahomedan and Hindu, 



Manners and Customs 43 

and as soldiers they are drawn more closely to- 
wards their British officers than any other of the 
fighting races. Their physical development is 
superb, and they are a sober and industrious folk. 
Two of their peculiarities may be mentioned; the 
men never cut their hair, and, when uncoiled, you 
may see it stretching almost to their knees, and in 
a country where tobacco smoking is universal, 
they abjure the habit. There is a quiet and inde- 
pendent dignity about them which seems to place 
them on a higher level than other brown races; 
but in their practical treatment of their women 
they fall behind the high standard of their general 
creed. 

Of the Burmese, it may be reckoned to his 
especial credit that he allows his women liberty, 
both in the ordering of their lives and in the 
selection of their husbands. In the all-important 
point of the equality of sex, the Buddhist religion 
is the only one that approaches Christianity in its 
liberalism. The subjection of woman in Mahom- 
edanism and her degradation in Hinduism reveal 
the true characters of the races which, in denying 
the spiritual equality of the weaker sex, display 
their baser manhood. Of the aboriginal tribes 
of India, it need only be said that they are true 
children of the forests, mountains, and deserts, 
and you find in them some of those virtues, not- 
ably truthfulness and candour, in which the 
higher civilised Hindu is sadly deficient. They 
are a primitive people, and some of them in the 



44 Indian Life 

remoter parts decidedly deserve the appellation of 
** savages." 

Passing now from manners and customs in the 
concrete, and the people to whom they are pe- 
culiar, we come to the consideration of * * custom ' ' 
in its abstract sense, and its distinct characteristic 
as the guide of life in India. '* Custom," an ad- 
vanced Hindu reformer has declared, ** is a god 
whom our race devoutly worship; it is our re- 
ligion." You may go further, and say it is the 
religion of all India, where the lex non scripta can 
overrule the lex scripta. The British Govern- 
ment, apt to be a little brusque and overbearing in 
its financial legislation, cries canny and is most 
considerate of custom. There are customs in In- 
dia the law dare not touch which would be con- 
sidered criminal ii^ England. The word is one to 
conjure and defy with. When, recently it was 
sought to diminish plague infection by house to 
house inspection, custom got its back up and the 
Government was obliged to cave in. In the 
statute book are laws quite inoperative because 
they are opposed to custom. 

Dustoor hat Q' It is the custom")! — The in- 
quiring soul who sets about asking questions in 
India will save himself much time if he stereo- 
types that reply in his mind at the start. For it 
is the one he will have to content himself with in 
the majority of his investigations. 

Custom is the child of caste; in many cases, it is 
begotten of it, and inherits its narrowing influence 



Manners and Customs 45 

on the national character. It is easy to perceive 
that the general life will run in a groove when the 
limit of a man's aspirations is determined by the 
obligation to follow his father's calling, and his 
ambition to improve his social status is rendered 
impossible by the accident of his birth. The 
caste system is a very jealous and obstinate one, 
and as iron when you attempt to bend it. It will 
admit no infusion of new blood, and when the 
same exclusive spirit is imported into the ordinary 
dealings of life, you arrive at that stagnant con- 
servatism which is called Custom in the Kast. 

Caste is restricted to the Hindus, but custom is 
universal. In many cases, it has almost con- 
structed itself into caste amongst non-Hindu 
races. There is a tendency to follow hereditary 
callings. In parts of the Punjab, the work of ex- 
pressing oil is practically a monopoly of the Ma- 
homedans; it has almost come to be regarded as 
their caste, and they are put down in the census- 
returns as " oil-pressers." To tell you a man is 
an oil-presser is equivalent to informing you he 
is a Mahomedan. The same with silk-weavers. 
There are some forms of employment a Hindu 
may not follow because it infringes some law of 
his caste, and these are in consequence undertaken 
by other races, and custom soon makes them pre- 
scriptive. Moreover, there is a certain unavoid- 
able contagion in caste when you live in a country 
where three fourths of the inhabitants profess it. 
You do not ask a Mahomedan what his race or 



46 Indian Life 

profession of faith is, but what is his caste ? In 
the census returns 3^ou fill in your own caste as 
" Christian." It is the custom. You talk of a 
high-caste Arab horse, a dog with no caste at all, 
a tea-plant of very decent caste. 

Custom in India frequently overrules common- 
sense in material matters, and imposes an insuper- 
able impediment on improvement. lyook at the 
Indian peasant' s plough. The overwhelming ma- 
jority of the inhabitants of India are dependent 
on the land, and their crops would be much in- 
creased by better methods of cultivation. The 
plough in use is an implement which merely 
scratches the surface of the earth; an heirloom 
from remotest antiquity. A new plough was in- 
troduced by an enterprising firm of manufacturers, 
and lent free for trial broadcast over a province. 
It admittedly did the work more thoroughly, and 
was offered at a price within the peasant's means. 
But it did not '* catch on." Why? Simply be- 
cause the ploughman could not get at his bullocks' 
tails to twist them. The superior tillage, the in- 
crease of crop, could not compensate for the re- 
linquishment of this time-honoured custom. The 
antediluvian plough still holds the field, and the 
system of cultivation is the same as it was in 
the time of Alexander the Great. 

There is a story, well enough known in India, 
of a contractor engaged in a railway excavation, 
who recognised that the soil could be far more ex- 
peditiously removed in wheelbarrows than carried 



Manners and Customs 47 

away in baskets on the heads of coolies. So he 
invested in some, and showed how they were to 
be trundled, and flattered himself upon having in- 
troduced a useful reform. But that sanguine re- 
former did not know his India. The next time 
he visited his works, he found his men filling the 
wheelbarrows with pinches of dust, and carrying 
them away on their heads. 

The paraphernalia of Indian daily life all be- 
longs to the barbarous ages. Observe any article 
of familiar use and you will find it primitive to a 
degree that strikes the Western eye as ludicrous. 
The pen is fashioned out of a reed, native paper 
a veritable papyrus, such as the ancient Egyptians 
might have used, the inkpot a piece of absorbent 
rag or sponge saturated with a liquid more or less 
black, and sand still takes the place of blotting- 
paper. The scribe, who may by reason of his 
superior attainments be accounted in the van of 
civilisation, is an individual who squats on the 
ground and writes on his knees even if you offer 
him a table and chair. Note the cumbersome 
native saddle for a horse, the heavy solid wheels 
of a country cart, the cart itself, constructed with 
a circular floor for things to slide off from, the 
artisan's clumsy and insufi&cient tools, the weav- 
er's prehistoric loom, the shape of the domestic 
utensils, the machinery for drawing water from a 
well, the style of dress— ay, of women's dress. 
Novelty or reform never enters into any of these 
or kindred things. They retain the fashions of 



48 Indian Life 

Before Christ in this twentieth century. Attempt 
to introduce any other and you are rebuffed with 
the reply, ** It is not the custom." For many of 
these things there is not the excuse of ignorance. 
The native has the superior model before him, and 
deliberately rejects it. It is the crass prejudice 
of a conservatism more crusted than the laws of 
cricket, and not to be beguiled by any demonstra- 
tion. ** My father used this article, and therefore 
it is my duty to use it; would you have me set 
myself up for a wiser man than my revered 
parent ? " is the reply which stifles all attempt at 
reform. 

But stay. There is one notable exception to 
this rule which I should be guilty of a gross in- 
justice to omit. The Indian tailor has thrown 
away his needle and taken to the sewing-machine. 
It comes upon you with something of a shock 
when, as you chance to pass through a bazaar, 
you suddenly become aware of the whir of me- 
chanical action, and, lo! there is a grave bearded 
man, squatting, near by and driving his Singer, 
which (to add appropriateness to the picture) he 
has purchased on the hire system, I cannot ex- 
plain this departure from custom, unless it be that 
the Hindu derzie, like the English cobbler, is a 
Radical from the force of a calling which lends 
itself to contemplation. 

When you come to abstract custom, you cannot 
stir the Hindu off his line of rail. This man will 
not do this, nor that man that, for no earthly 



Manners and Customs 49 

reason except that it is against his custom. This 
is at the bottom of those enormous domestic 
establishments which enter into the prodigality 
of Anglo-Indian life. The combined work of the 
army of servants is capable of achievement by a 
general servant in England. But when a Kuro- 
pean attempts to shift things out of their eternal 
groove, he is at once confronted with that one re- 
ply which admits of no argument in the native 
mind. And I must candidly admit that the plea 
of dustoor nahi7t hai is often a conscientious ob- 
jection, although this does not prevent it from be- 
coming a comfortable excuse on occasions. 

In social and religious matters, the despotism 
of custom is perhaps most pronounced. It leads 
to preposterous and extravagant expenditure on 
marriage and funeral ceremonies; it entails long 
and expensive pilgrimages; it established Suttee, 
or the self-immolation of the widow on her hus- 
band's funeral pyre; it permitted, nay, even now 
permits, infanticide; and the sale of female child- 
ren for immoral purposes and the institution of the 
Temple prostitute are crimes created by custom 
and not religion. 

The Brahmins are, in the main, the supporters 
and guardians of custom; they themselves, whose 
privilege it is to prey upon the people, are bol- 
stered up by it. Their hoary despotism is the 
oldest and crudest custom of all. 

Truly has it been said that custom is the great- 
est obstacle to civilisation. It stands in the path 



50 



Indian Life 



like a lion. It dulls the moral sense and cramps 
material effort. It has left the natives of India 
without originality, independence, or powers of 
initiation. India is a country incapable of in- 
digenous reform. Two thousand years ago its 
social life reached a certain standard of civilisa- 
tion, and it has stayed there ever since. The lim- 
itations imposed by custom have been the cause of 
this national paralysis. 




CHAPTER IV 

FROM RYOTS TO RAJAHS 

EVERY one knows what a rajah is, but the 
ryot is not such a widely recognised man. 
Yet two thirds of the population of the British 
Empire is composed of ryots, who outnumber the 
inhabitants of the British Isles by five to one. 
The ryot is, in short, the Indian peasant, and in 
the census papers he comes out easily top of the 
list with a score of over two hundred millions. 
He is the poorest man who owns allegiance to the 
King, and his average income is three halfpence 
a day. Oftentimes it comes to pass that between 
him and salvation only hovers a shower of rain. 
For a wage of twopence halfpenny or threepence 
a day, he will emigrate to distant parts of the Em- 
pire; offer him eightpence, and he will go to the 
West Indies or the islands of the Pacific. He is 
chronically in debt, and when his creditors sell 
him up they are lucky if his estate realises ten 
shillings. Of such is the ryot as a pecuniary asset 
of the Empire, 

He is nominally a civilised man, on whom caste 
has conferred an elaborate social system, and he 
51 



52 Indian Life 

has behind him a history from which he has 
evolved a policy — patience, — and a philosophy — 
fatalism. Khoda jdne! (''God knows!") and 
''Khoda ka merzee " (' * It is the will of God ' ' ) sum 
up his speculations of the future, and register his 
resignation to the past. He has nothing more to 
say. And yet this humble creature produces raj ahs 
— pages of them, as any Indian directory will 
certify — as penny fares produce railway kings, or 
the soil of a flower-bed tulips. In fact, the rajahs 
are the tulips that spring out of this sad clay of 
humanity. Without the ryot, there would be no 
Golden Kast. He is the atom of dust which, 
mingled with millions of other atoms, gives 
growth to those gorgeous blossoms that shed their 
lustre in England, when Jubilee or Coronation 
calls them to her shores. Those gems and jewels 
you see decorating the portly exteriors of dusky 
potentates are paid for with the sweat of the ryot's 
brow. A large portion of the eighty million 
pounds of revenue annually extracted from India 
comes from the pockets of the peasantry. 

' ' The ryot at home ' ' can be drawn with a 
piece of charcoal on a whitewashed wall. Item, a 
single-roomed thatched hut, built by himself, 
without doors, windows, or chimney; item, a 
floor, plastered with cow-dung, and three or five 
bricks, set like a robin trap, to serve as fire-place; 
item, a rough framework of wood with some coir 
rope strung across it to act as a bed for the master 
of the house; item, a few earthenware pots to con- 



From Ryots to Rajahs 53 

tain water, and ditto dishes to serve up food in; 
item, something which looks like a patchwork 
door-mat, but is in reality his bedclothes; item, a 
cloth for his loins, another for his shoulders, and 
a third for his head; item, his wife's petticoat, 
bodice, and saree (into which, woman-like, she 
manages to get a dash of colour and look pictur- 
esque). The inventory is complete. We read in 
the Bible of a man taking up his bed and walk- 
ing; the ryot can in many cases not only take up 
his bed, but all his family's belongings, and trot 
off with them. 

His uneventful life is one of dreary monotony 
and labour, with a week of seven working days. 
Perhaps three or four times a year, he enjoys a 
holiday, when some festival of his caste permits 
the opportunity. If he has saved up fourpence to 
squander on sweetmeats, he is a jubilant man. 
But a little of this dissipation has to go a long 
way, and his eye is always on the sky, looking 
for that shower of rain. If it does not come, he is 
bankrupt. Nay, as like as not, the blue firma- 
ment may have his death-warrant written on it. 

The field he tills is not his own, for in India all 
land belongs to the ruler of the territory, and rent 
has to be paid for it; he is assessed from an 
eighth to half his produce. If he has mortgaged 
his land, and he nearly always has, it is never less 
than half. 

If he has no land, he must still be taxed. It 
is naturally rather difficult to levy on a person 



54 Indian Life 

whose income is tenpence halfpenny a week; but 
still it must be done in order that the wheels 
of the chariot of British Kmpire may roll on. 
You would think that a man who was too poor to 
hold land under the conditions described would 
be too poor to tax. Excise cannot reach him; it 
would be positively indecent to demand tribute 
from his dress, although if in his vanity he de- 
mands English cotton goods he has to pay duty 
on them. But the Government of India in its 
infinite wisdom has discovered a method of bleed- 
ing stones. In the economy of nature, man is an 
animal who cannot avoid eating salt, and that 
necessary article of diet has been put under con- 
tribution, whereby even the beggars of the Empire 
pay their tribute to Caesar. The salt-tax is one of 
the soundest fiscal resources in India. 

In the district where I lived there were some 
mines that yielded black salt, a villainous-looking 
substance like dark sandstone. I have known 
natives to travel three days' journey to those 
mines, to give a day's free labour for quarrying, 
and go home again three days' march, in order 
that they might lay in their year's supply at the 
cheapest rate. It cost them a week's travel, plus 
a shilling, and most of the shilling went to Gov- 
ernment in the shape of salt- tax. 

I vow there is no more pathetic figure in the 
British Empire than the Indian ryot. His mas- 
ters have ever been unjust to him, and ground and 
ground him until everything has been expressed, 



From Ryots to Rajahs 55 

except the marrow of his bones. Even Nature 
has scant pity on him, for she constantly scourges 
him with famine, and (as happened three years 
ago) exterminates a million lives with a dry 
breath. A sword, like that of Damocles, hangs 
permanently suspended over the ryot, and every 
sowing season, he sees the hair that sustains it 
stretching like a piece of elastic. Perhaps it is a 
merciful thing for him that he is a fatalist, and 
that *' the will of God" sufficiently explains for 
him the multitude of his hardships and the in- 
equality of his state. 

As in England, so in India, it is a great step up 
from the agricultural labourer to tlie artisan class. 
The latter are a well-to-do folk, and you seldom 
see them suffering the pinch of poverty, except in 
the universal cataclysm of a famine. The system 
of caste has in practice made a trades-union of 
each calling, and very definite are the rules and 
conditions under which members work. A strike, 
in the English sense, does not enter into the policy 
of the Eastern artisan; but, nevertheless, he has 
an acute appreciation of the exact amount of 
work to be rendered for his remuneration, which 
is regulated by custom, and not individual ability, 
and you cannot hurry him. 

He is often an ingenious fellow, and his aesthetic 
sense is proved by his ornamental metal work, his 
exquisite wood-carving, his elegant architecture, 
and his masterly moulding. Sir George Bird wood 
has it that he is a born artist. If you let him go 



56 Indian Life 

to work his own way, he will often surmount diffi- 
culties you would not give him the credit of being 
able to overcome. I can remember a village 
blacksmith who was employed as an assistant 
handy- man to an engineer, and eventually stepped 
into his place, not only driving an engine, but 
keeping its working parts in repair. I have 
known a mason whose wage was sixpence a day 
to build a house from a plan, when he himself 
could neither read nor write; and a carpenter on 
four shillings a week to copy most excellently well 
the design of a piece of English furniture from 
the illustration in an advertisement. 

In many cases, not only is the calling of the 
artisan hereditary, but his particular appointment. 
Bach village has its blacksmith, carpenter, and 
potter, who are communal functionaries, and 
bound by immemorial custom to render certain 
services, for which they get what is in effect a 
salary from the village, and each villager has a 
prescriptive right to have certain things done for 
him. But amongst these skilled folk you shall 
look in vain for a plumber, a painter, or a cabinet- 
maker, as you may for a chemist's, a stationer's, 
or a bookseller's shop. On the other hand, you 
will find many more workers in brass, silver, and 
gold than in similar communities in England 
— for this reason, that all the native's domestic 
utensils are made of brass, and most of his sav- 
ings go to making silver or gold ornaments for his 
wife. That is his ' ' capital. ' ' 



From Ryots to Rajahs 57 

The common carrier does a great business in 
India, though much less now than in the days 
before railways. In many parts, beasts of burden, 
chiefly oxen, are the principal means of transport, 
and the brinjari' s life is much like that of the 
gipsy's. You meet him everywhere, with his 
droves of pack-oxen, carrying grain and merchan- 
dise from distant places to feed the great lines of 
railway. He seems out of date in this age, and 
yet a hundred years ago his prototype was com- 
mon enough in Kngland, when the roads there 
were certainly not to be compared with those in 
India at the present day. 

Of all classes in Indian life there is no one who 
seems so admirably suited to his setting as the 
Indian tradesman. In the first place, he lives in 
an atmosphere of money, be it silver, copper, or 
cowrie shells, and that appeals to the national 
character. In the second place, he can be indo- 
lently industrious, that is to say, put in a long 
day's work sitting on his hams. 

In a calling where competition largely enters, 
the Indian tradesman is curiously conservative. 
He does not go about looking for a good "pitch," 
or trying to find a neighbourhood where he will 
have a monopoly of the article he deals in. Cus- 
tom has ordained that in an Indian bazaar birds 
of a feather shall flock together, and the different 
streets become a sort of exclusive market for each 
commodity. In this place, you will see a row of 
grain sellers, in that, a congregation of hardware 



58 Indian Life 

merchants ; the butchers are all established cheek 
by jowl yonder, and the cloth merchants cluster 
in a quarter of their own. A morning's miscel- 
laneous shopping takes you ' * round the town. ' ' 
The art of advertising is absolutely unknown, and 
the shopkeeper's name is more often than not con- 
sidered unnecessary above his shop. You would 
think that the communal system, which is so 
characteristic of the Indian village, had entered 
into the trade of the country, and that it was con- 
ducted on the principles of a trust, with no need 
to compete. 

The shopkeeper sits on the floor of his shop, 
surrounded by his various goods, and his client 
addresses him from the street or gutter. He 
never rises to serve a customer, for everything is 
within reach of his hand. He may solicit the 
passer-by to purchase, but if unsuccessfully, his 
philosophy is much the same as the ryot's — it is 
the will of God. If, however, any one stops to 
deal, he will haggle for all time. Providence 
having sent a customer his way, the personal 
equation enters, and he must not be allowed to 
depart without buying. 

The shops in a bazaar all seem about the same 
size. There are no large establishments, and a 
Corner Grocery or Cash Stores are out of the 
question, because each man sells his particular 
wares and nothing else. There are no shop- 
assistants, and, needless to say, no early closing. 
Women never meddle with trade, which is solely 



From Ryots to Rajahs 59 

in the hands of the men. Credit is universally 
given, and huge interest added. Short weights 
are common, and the milkman waters his milk to 
an atrocious degree. Scales are made of wood 
and string, and before weighment are ostenta- 
tiously suspended to demonstrate that they hang 
evenly, whilst when it comes to the balance, the 
side of the hand is always on the side of the com- 
modity being weighed, and seldom idle. A na- 
tive will brag that he ''saved" or **made" so 
much in the process of weighing. Silversmiths 
require particular attention, or they will mix alloy 
with sterling metal. The ambition of every trader 
is to become a money-lender, for usury has an 
irresistible charm to the native mind. 

The moneyed classes in India are either land- 
owners on a large scale or merchants trading in a 
large way. They form a small percentage of the 
population in point of numbers. The investment 
of wealth in India inclines to land, for in a coun- 
try where the soil theoretically belongs to the 
ruler, to possess a share carries a certain prestige 
with it, and the instinct of the Hindu race is 
agricultural. The Indian system of registration 
makes land tenure far more safe and simple than 
in England, with its intricacies of titles and title- 
deeds. There is, however, a growing tendency 
to invest moneys in securities, and the Govern- 
ment savings banks are well patronised. In the 
head centres of commerce, the mercantile classes 
have been bitten with the mania of speculative 



6o Indian Life 

investment, and the cotton market of Bombay 
and the industrial ventures in Calcutta supply- 
plenty of media for gambling. When gold was 
discovered in Southern India some years ago, 
many companies were formed, and the wild specu- 
lation in their shares was quite Western in its 
intensity. The spirit of gambling is curiously 
pronounced in a race that is otherwise thrifty by 
instinct. The Marwarries, or native bankers of 
Calcutta, wager wildly on the rain when the mon- 
soon is about to burst, and, to draw illustration 
from a trifle, in bargaining between Europeans 
and shopkeepers, a proposal to toss to fix the 
price is seldom declined, and sometimes proposed. 
* ' Hoarding ' ' is very commonly adopted by 
those who have money, and mother earth is prob- 
ably the principal of all Indian banks. To dig a 
hole in the floor of his house and bury his money 
there is still the favourite resource of many a 
native, and could all the buried treasure in the 
country be brought to light, it would probably be 
sufficient to pay oflf the national debt of the Em- 
pire. In my own experience, I have frequently, 
in the course of business transactions, had money 
tendered me in bags the shaking of which dis- 
closed a very fair sample of the soil from which 
the rupees had recently been disinterred; and I 
have known much wailing and lamentation to fol- 
low the sudden death of an individual who had 
omitted to disclose the spot where his money was 
hidden from his own heirs. 



From Ryots to Rajahs 6i 

The homes of the moneyed classes do not, as a 
rule, display the striking contrast to the homes of 
the poor to which one is accustomed in England. 
Drawing and dining rooms there reflect the taste 
and indicate the care of English wives, but in 
India, the woman has no voice in these matters, 
for her apartments are separate and secluded. 
Then, again, there is no furniture; chairs and 
tables are unknown in Indian native life, not to 
mention glazed windows and chimneys. The 
Indian has no sense of surrounding himself with 
comfort, in English home phrase. Cover the floor 
with mats or carpets, and you have finished his 
house-furnishing. He would feel as awkward in 
a furnished room as Europeans would to live in 
one of his bare apartments. The love of display 
is a guiding principle in the lives of the wealthy, 
and if they squander money, they would much 
rather buy an equipage that will attract atten- 
tion when they are abroad than furnish their 
homes in a way which only the occasional Euro- 
pean visitor could appreciate, and to adapt them- 
selves to which would be positive discomfort. 
You have but to see a native sitting on a chair 
to realise this, albeit the ofier of one is the 
most coveted compliment you can pay him. He 
writhes in it much as an Englishman would do 
were he compelled to sit for any length of time on 
the floor. 

High, high on the top of the Indian social tree, 
whose roots draw nourishment from the two 



62 Indian Life 

hundred millions of ryots, blossoms the rajah. 
How many there are of him, big, little, and mid- 
dUng, it would be hard to say (for the principle of 
petty principalities is as indigenous to Hindustan 
as to Germany), but it may safely be stated as not 
very far short of a thousand. How petty some of 
them are who are, nevertheless, entitled to the dis- 
tinction of* Rajah " can scarce be credited. One 
I knew would hobnob with my servants, and his 
revenue from his hereditary kingdom was con- 
siderably less than ;^2oo a year. He lived in a 
most picturesque old castle, inhabited chiefly by 
snakes, scorpions, and bats, but he spent most of 
his life in the neighbouring British law court de- 
fending actions for debt. I remember entering a 
walled town in Kattywar and seeing what looked 
like a loafer drinking gin out of a bottle as he 
squatted in the gateway. "Who are you?" I 
asked. * ' The King of this country, ' ' he replied 
with perfect truth. He boasted an ancestry that 
was supposed to go back to the sun. And talking 
of ancestry, in the published life of" I^utfullah," 
a respectable Mahomedan gentleman, you may 
see in the beginning a pedigree extended back to 
Adam in sober pride and credulous satisfaction. 

From the rififraff of royalty, to whom I have 
alluded, it is a far cry to such potentates as the 
Nizam of Hyderabad, the Guicwar of Baroda, or 
the Maharajah of Mysore, rulers who govern 
kingdoms as extensive as the British Isles in 
whole or in part. Nor must mention be omitted 



From Ryots to Rajahs 63 

of the Rajah of Udaipur, whose proud boast is 
that he never bent the knee to the Great Mogul. 
His absence through ''indisposition" from the 
Delhi durbar ceremony of January, 1903, when 
the King was proclaimed Emperor of India, was, 
I make no doubt, due to his disinclination to yield 
precedence to other rajahs placed above him. 

Officially the nice degrees of, what I may call, 
the superior kings are indicated by the salutes 
they are entitled to receive. Thus there are some 
three or four to whom the compliment of twenty- 
one guns is accorded on State occasions. From 
this, by diminutions of two guns, the salutes 
dwindle down to nine. The greatest punishment 
that can be inflicted on an Indian king is to dock 
him a couple of guns in his salute. It sends 
him down a place in his class, and the jealousy 
amongst these sovereigns transcends description. 

Another mode of assessing a rajah is by his in- 
come, which is in practice the entire revenue of 
his state. As the English talk of six-pounders, 
twelve-ton guns, and eight5^-ton guns, so they talk 
in India of one-lakh, ten-lakh, and thirty -lakh 
rajahs, a lakh being a hundred thousand rupees. 
The rajah fixes his own civil list, and expends 
the balance of his revenue on the expenses of his 
state, and his life is often one long struggle to 
keep the major portion to squander on himself. 

The Indian courtier has brought the art of 
fawning and flattering to an acme, and words 
would be powerless to describe the atmosphere 



64 Indian Life 

of adulation in which the rajah lives. To see 
him lost in self-indulgence is the one end and aim 
of his ministers, in order that they may be left a 
free hand. Thus every temptation is spread be- 
fore him, and every snare set that safety permits. 
When a rajah takes to vicious ways, it may be 
said that what he does not do to disgrace human- 
ity leaves very little to be done. Happily the 
power of life and death is not left in his hands 
by the suzerain power. 

There is a school for young rajahs, where they 
are trained in the way they should go, and afforded 
an education on good wholesome public-school 
lines. It has worked wonders, and is turning 
out a new race of rajahs to take the place of the 
old, besotted, obese brutes, who have disgraced so 
many thrones in the ;E)ast. The new rajah is a 
very decent fellow — certainly for some time after 
he has left school. He can ride, shoot, play polo, 
cricket, tennis, and other games, and comport 
himself like a man; dance, too, and behave in a 
drawing-room like a gentleman. If he avoids 
drink, and rises superior to the almost overpower- 
ing temptations of the zenana or the harem, he 
often becomes a first-rate governing man, espe- 
cially if he belongs to one of the martial races. 

The power for good and evil vested in the hands 
of a rajah is enormous, even though he have a 
British official Resident at his court to keep an 
eye on how he is conducting himself. No Vice- 
roy or Governor can appeal to the people of India 



From Ryots to Rajahs 65 

like one of their own rulers. The Englishman is 
an impersonal potentate; no matter what his 
status, he is *' unclean " to the Hindu, a ** Kafir " 
to the Mahomedan. He lacks colour and pictur- 
esqueness, even though he be a Lord Curzon, and 
altogether fails to elicit the same genuine admira- 
tion in an Indian durbar that an Indian rajah does 
in an English assembly. On the other hand, the 
rajah is in accord with his subjects in sentiment, 
creed, and thought. He appeals to their instincts 
with his display. They love to see his elephants 
and gaily caparisoned horsemen, his silks and his 
jewels, his retainers and entourage. His bar- 
baric pleasures delight them; he tosses money to 
the multitudes in his progress; he feasts them at 
appropriate seasons; he is a link between the 
present and the past. What is the coming or go- 
ing of a sober-coated foreigner to them ? What, 
even, the marriage of a Viceroy? But when a 
rajah comes into his own, or marries, or has a 
son born to him, then is the whole kingdom inter- 
ested, entertained, and made happy in a round of 
feasting and festivities free to all. 

And if he " squeezes ' ' his ryots to get money 
to build a new palace, or deck with jewels the 
latest favourite in his zenana, or to entertain a 
Viceroy, or — newest and most extravagant whim 
of all! — to make a summer trip to England, well, 
there is the land; it bears crops. There is the 
land-tiller; he is patient and long-suffering. He 
has paid the piper for ages, and never called the 



66 



Indian Life 



tune. He can go on paying! And whilst his 
liege lord and master is astonishing the richest 
city in the world with the glitter of his gems, and 
the magnificence of his establishment, the poorest 
subject in the world merely turns his eyes to the 
blue skies and sighs. 




CHAPTKR V 

JACKS IN OFFIC:^ 

WK have seen how India is divided by race, 
language, religion, caste, and wealth, 
but there is yet another division, which, although 
it only detaches a fraction from the whole, still 
demands attention, because it is the governing 
element. And the members of it afford an ad- 
mirable illustration of the attitude we understand 
by the phrase ''Jacks in Ofl5ce." 

The possibilities of temporal power are nowhere 
more thoroughly appreciated and developed than 
in India. The Indian official, European or na- 
tive, is the master, not the servant, of the public. 
It is not too much to say that the native has ele- 
vated service under Government into something 
very like a privileged predatory caste, common 
to Hindu and Mahomedan. The '' Man in Au- 
thority," no matter how humble his appointment, 
draws away from his fellows, and acquires a defi- 
nite position and power over them from his asso- 
ciation with the machinery of Government. The 
highest ambition of every native is to get into the 
service of the State, for it assures him the three 
67 



68 Indian Life 

P's— pay, pension, and pickings. And the great- 
est of these is pickings. 

All authority in India is despotic. British rule 
is a despotism pure and simple, tempered with a 
bland desire to deal justly. The rule of the rajah 
is personal, with a corner of his eye on the British 
Resident to see how he takes encroachments on 
the revenue for the Civil lyist. Spreading down- 
wards from these summits, the subtle spirit of 
despotism pervades all branches of the administra- 
tions. The lower you penetrate the social scale, 
and the more inwardly you explore the ignorant 
masses, so assuredly shall you find the despotism 
greater and more brutal. For sheer unmitigated 
tyranny, where he has an object in view to gain, 
the policeman of India knows no equal; in cun- 
ning and rapacity, the chiipprassi, or guardian of 
the threshold, is a man who has reduced black- 
mailing to a fine art. 

The administration of India is carried on in 
practice by something like three thousand Eng- 
lishmen, who act as heads or assistant heads of 
departments. All the working parts of the ma- 
chinery of Government, its subordinate and clerical 
posts, are filled by natives. An average Indian 
' ' district, ' ' as each administrative area is called, 
is a tract of country as extensive as the largest 
English counties. The English staff administer- 
ing this territory seldom exceeds more than five 
or six officials, to carry out whose orders there 
exist a company of native clerks and a regiment 



Jacks in Office 69 

of understrappers. The actual execution of au- 
thority filters through their hands. There is no 
means of ventilating abuse, for there is no public 
opinion, no public Press (broadly speaking), and 
no pnlDlicity in India. Conceive, then the result 
when every Jack- man of that subordinate and 
crafty crew is bent on making, by hook or by 
crook, some illicit profit over and above the salary 
assigned for the execution of his official duties. 

In England, a civil servant is rightly regarded 
as a man of fixed income. Be he in a Govern- 
ment Department or the Post-Office, anything, in 
short, from a Prime Minister to a telegraph-boy, 
you know that his remuneration is exact and un- 
elastic. But in India, the native employee of 
Government would be horrified to think that his 
income was fixed. On the contrary, he regards 
it merely as a stepping-stone to making money. 
Where there is litigation, direct taxation, and 
crime, there is profit to be derived by the shrewd 
and enterprising man, and the Indian Jack in 
Office is the person designed by Nature to show 
how to derive it. 

Bribery and corruption are the rule, not the ex- 
ception, in the Bast. In every transaction in life, 
it is held to be not only allowable but sensible to 
derive some advantage over and above the sched- 
uled amount. He would be a poor fool who did 
not avail himself of dustoorie, or the customary 
fee. There is not a single native in India who 
does not pay or receive dustoorie in some form or 



70 Indian Life 

other. It is the unearned increment of the East. 
It enters into every phase of life, and, according 
to the form it assumes, may be a perquisite, a 
commission, a fine, a bribe, or blackmail. In 
transactions between the subject and those placed 
in authority over him, it becomes a bribe or black- 
mail, and Jack in Ofl&ce is the recipient, and the 
whole of the rest of the population the fleeced. 

Bribery is ingrained in the native character, and 
a recognised part of the etiquette of their social 
system. The inferior always approaches a new 
superior with a gift in his hand — made, not from 
love, but from policy, and to neglect it is boorish 
rudeness, as well as a folly. It is a bribe in em- 
bryo, meant to smooth the way for an ultimate 
benefit. Notwithstanding, the native will affect 
to be vastly affronted if it is declined. It is called 
a nuzzer or ddli^ which, being interpreted, means 
a complimentary tribute. Ask why it is proffered, 
and you will never get any other answer except 
that " It is the custom." Needless to say. Eng- 
lishmen are pestered with ddlis — if they are worth 
pestering. They usually take the form of a tray 
neatly piled with sweetmeats, flowers, and fruit, 
apparently a most innocent confection. But, 
when the investment is fairly safe, a bag of rupees 
not unfrequently lurks under the pile of sugar- 
candy. Say, for instance, you are an engineer, 
with a fat contract to give out, and a reputation 
for accepting ddlis, you could practically depend 
on that bag of rupees when you received a com- 



Jacks in Office 71 

plimentary visit from a local contractor. Happily 
such incidents are exceedingly rare in connection 
with Englishmen, and the ddli contains nothing 
more guilty than roses, oranges, and lollipops. 
But with native officials the case is dififerent, and 
the ddli is the recognised vehicle for a bribe. 

It is a moot point with the Anglo-Indian 
whether to accept ddlis of the innocent description 
or not. Some do; some don't. In the latter case, 
they ' ' touch and remit ' ' them, which is supposed 
to salve the feelings of the donors, whose offer- 
ings are theoretically accepted, but in practice re- 
turned, as the touching of the heels of a monarch 
with the spurs is supposed to endow him with 
knightly virtues. Christmastide is the apotheosis 
or ddlis; then does every native you know desire 
to present you with one, his eyes glued on the re- 
turn chance. 

If I have dealt at a little length on the nuzzer 
or ddli system, it is to illustrate the national 
character with which Jack in Office has to deal. 
Here are a people who voluntarily give bribes; 
who will have you believe politeness demands it; 
who are willing, nay, anxious, to expend a day's 
pay in propitiating a stranger who comes to as- 
sume authority over them. Saddle that people 
with an administration considerably more urgent 
to receive than to give a bribe, and endowed with 
an absolute faith in its fitness, and you shall see 
the art of extortion carried to its extreme. Power 
in the hands of such a class is merely a lever to 



72 Indian Life 

extract profit from the powerless; and there are 
no people in the world so powerless, unprotected, 
and preyed upon as the peasants of the Indian 
Empire. I have no hesitation in saying that 
several millions of rupees are paid away every 
year in India in the shape of dustoorie, or the un- 
earned increment of pillagers. 

And now let us see how these conditions work 
out in practice in India. Every schoolboy knows 
that the sale of justice in the East is a simple and 
time-honoured institution. Is justice sold under 
the British raj ? Without a doubt it is. I will 
pass over the higher native officials holding what 
may be called Englishmen's appointments, with 
the observation that they are not immaculate. I 
could recall a recent case where a bribe of some 
thousands of pounds, specially contracted to be 
paid in gold bullion, passed between a litigant 
and a native judge who was the highest judicial 
authority in the district. And I could quote 
several others. But in this rank venality is the 
exception. 

When you come to the subordinate judicial 
staff, the native judges and magistrates, with re- 
stricted powers and comparatively small salaries, 
you may take it as an axiom that, in the slang 
phrase, they are all '' on the make." Prudence 
alone puts a limit to their harvest. Of course, no 
one but a fool would take a bribe often; that 
would be the surest way of killing the goose that 
laid the golden eggs. In riding a foul race, the 



Jacks in Ofifice 73 

jockey's horse must gallop, and to retain a seat 
on the bench of justice, the judge must dispense 
justice in general. It is from the percentage of 
his backslidings that the venal judge acquires his 
reputation. " He is a very good magistrate," I 
have often heard it said of a native functionary by 
natives; " he takes very few bribes." In other 
cases, a sad shake of the head, and the mournful, 
^ * There is no satisfying him ! ' ' has been a suffi- 
cient commentary. 

Notwithstanding this foreknowledge that the 
dice are probably loaded, the native of India 
plunges into the lottery of litigation with absolute 
gusto. It is a speculation that appeals to him, 
requiring as it does chicanery and lying. For 
whilst blaming the unjust judge, it must not be 
forgotten that the unjust witness is almost as 
great a factor in the prostitution of the law courts, 
and that perjury is the basis of all evidence in 
India; the " fourpenny witness," who will for 
that modest professional fee swear to anything, 
haunts the precincts of the courts, and will re- 
hearse you a tragedy or concoct you a con- 
catenation so that even cross-examination shall 
be powerless to shake him , The actual eye-witness 
rarely gives his testimony without introducing 
gratuitous and needless fiction. It is an admitted 
and notorious fact that the bulk of the evidence 
tendered in the law courts of India is perjured, 
and yet prosecution for perjury is practically un- 
known. It is the "custom "; that Augean stable 



74 Indian Life 

is too foul to attempt to sweep, and British ad- 
ministration shrinks from the task. It may even 
be logically argued by the judicial Jack in Office 
that until Government takes steps to punish and 
put a stop to perjury, the illegitimate profits of 
justice may just as well pass into his pockets as 
into those of the professional liar. 

Leaving this unsavoury subject, let us pass to 
the consideration of those Jacks in Office who 
have to make their illicit gains by operations less 
simple than selling justice. That, after all, can 
be done genteelly and with an air of learning, and 
even defended in a plausible judgment delivered 
in open court. The Indian policeman proceeds in 
a different way. His the open palm and the veiled 
threat. A ''case " represents itself to him in two 
aspects: shall it be pursued for reputation or 
rupees ? If he decides on the former as the most 
profitable, then this Jack in Office has no hesita- 
tion in applying the methods of the mediseval 
torturer in order to extort a confession from the 
accused man. If lucre is his object, it degenerates 
into a matter of blackmail, and most probably the 
trumping up of false evidence. The visit of a 
constable to the most honest homestead in India is 
like the visit of a wolf When the inspector follows, 
it is like a tiger to the attack. " Once get the 
police in " is an Indian phrase that corre- 
sponds to the English " Once get the plumber 

in ." The Hindu's hut is very far from being 

his castle. The policeman literally takes up his 



Jacks in Office 75 

abode on the premises, lives on the fat of the land, 
so far as the victim's family can provide it, and 
never departs without a substantial reason . Those 
in England who look upon the ** Bobby " as their 
comfortable friend and the protector of their 
hearths and homes during the wicked night 
hours, little know what awful shape his Indian 
prototype can assume, whose presence is far more 
dreaded than that of a thief. For, after all, the 
native can defend himself against a thief, but he 
is powerless to do so against the arch-robber who 
poses as a policeman. 

As with the man in blue, so in his special de- 
gree with every low Jack in Office in India. The 
surveyor who comes round to assess the land for 
taxation can find a vast diminution in its ratable 
value, not to mention its superficial area, if the 
owner is lavish with his dustoorie ; the watchman 
who guards a timber reserve is blind to the cut- 
ting of a tree if a quarter of its value is slipped 
into his hand; the goods-clerk on an Indian rail- 
way, under the highest pressure of accumulated 
consignments, what time markets are urgent, will 
always find an empty truck for the merchandise 
that is recommended with a coin or two. Every 
Jack in Office has his price; it is absolutely be- 
yond the genius of the native character to refuse 
a bribe. 

Perhaps the most wonderful Jack of all is the 
chupprassi, who is a creation peculiar to the East, 
and a sort of janitor at the verandah. He an- 



76 Indian Life 

nounces your arrival, runs errands, performs petty 
commissions, and is a blend between an oflfice- 
boy and a commissionnaire . He lives within hail 
of his master, and is supposed to possess his ear. 
You would not credit him with transcendent 
powers, and yet the way that lowly individual 
can coin money out of his own post passes con- 
ception. He is the front-door bell, and there is 
no seeing the master unless he is rung. '* Wait; 
the sahib is busy," is all he says, and you may 
wait till doomsday if you fail to fee him. The 
well-to-do native has a distinct disinclination to 
being made to wait; it is far more derogatory in 
his eyes than you would suppose, and he willingly 
pays toll, or, as you may say, tolls the bell. The 
poor suppliant with a petition seeks advice from 
the chupprassi, asking if the sahib is in a good 
temper to be approached, and this Jack in Office 
has always a sound opinion to sell. The power 
and influence accredited to him are extraordinary; 
he is in and out of his master's room; he knows 
all his moods and humours; he will unfailingly 
tell you when is the best moment to make appeal. 
It may appear preposterous, but such information 
in a land where despotism rules supreme has a 
market value, and the chupprassi makes the most 
of it. I have heard of a case of one man on a 
wage of six shillings a month who contrived to 
increase it to as many pounds by the exercise of 
his peculiar talents in imposing on the credulous 
and exacting toll from the ignorant. 



Jacks in Office 11 

We have seen these Jacks in Office in their 
smiling moods when the world is going well with 
them, but there is another side to the picture, 
lyct the seeker-after-something be too poor or too 
ill-advised to bribe, and you will see a change 
in the demeanour of the man in authority. 
He becomes a truculent tyrant, a domineering 
despot, who reflects all the lightnings of heaven, 
and borrows the roaring of its thunderbolts. He 
is devoid of manners and politeness, he rants and 
he raves, he storms and he swears, and will have 
you understand that he is a portion of the govern- 
ing machinery of the land. He is Jekyl, or he is 
Hyde, according to whether you fee him or not. 

For in India, generally speaking, as the inferior 
is servile so is the superior overbearing. Courtesy 
from the high to the low is an almost unknown 
quality; from Jack in Office to those who have 
dealings with him, and omit to fee him, an un- 
known one. When once the breath of a little 
power gets into the native's nostrils, it invariably 
issues out in the shape of abuse. The abuse of 
the Kast is untranslatable, a thing apart. Kng- 
lishmen relieve themselves in Hindu.stani when 
they find their own tongue inoperative. In the 
native courts of law, I have heard a magistrate 
address those he was trying, or hearing evidence 
from, as dogs and swine. As for merely calling 
a man a liar, that is usually justified by circum- 
stances. This attitude is not un frequently part 
and parcel of native official life, and dropped in 



78 Indian Life 

private behaviour. Blustering and boorishness, 
impatience and petulance, are the licensed privi- 
leges of Jacks in Office. The practice of civility 
never enters into the economy of the native civil 
service. 

In common with other bullies, the Indian native 
official is a currish-spirited thing at the bottom, 
and he loses none of his inherent servility by his 
translation to the governing sphere. To his su- 
periors, he adopts the behaviour he exacts from 
those beneath him. Indeed, his humility is in- 
variably exaggerated towards those whose breath 
can unmake as their breath has made. He is a 
consummate actor and Machiavelian schemer, 
who seldom fails to worm himself into favour. 
Notwithstanding his roguery and backsliding, he 
is rarely dismissed from office, being far too cun- 
ning to run the risk of that. Moreover, he is 
supported in his hour of need by the clannishness 
of the predatory tribe he belongs to. There is 
much of the jackal in Jack in Office, who only 
fights with his kind when it comes to dividing 
the spoil. If, however, disaster overtakes him, 
and he gets the order to " go," in an instant the 
fierce light of rapine dies out of his eyes, the bulk 
of his turban is diminished, the ample starched 
linen robes give way to meagre soiled garments, 
his arrogance departs, and he passes over to the 
meek majority whose badge is sufferance. Second 
only to losing caste is the loss of employment in 
he service of Government. 



Jacks in Office 79 

There are Jacks in Office outside Government 
employ, for you may say that every native of 
India who has it in his power to confer an obliga- 
tion is one in a minor degree. The favourite of a 
rich man — and in the Bast favouritism is an al- 
most universal foible — who has the ear of his 
master can always put it to profitable account. 
The Englishman's ** bearer," or valet, has numer- 
ous opportunities of turning a penny. The cook, 
who provisions the larder periodically, does not 
do it for nothing. They all exact their quid pro 
quo, and never a purchase made for you or your 
household but pays its recognised dustoorie, or 
commission. Half an anna in the rupee is the 
established scale, which works out three per cent. , 
or double the ordinary rate of brokerage in com- 
mercial transactions. In a strange city, if you 
hire a gharrie, which is the Oriental equivalent 
of a cab, and tell the man to drive to a shop 
where you can purchase such-and-such a thing, 
that jehu gets his pickings out of your pur- 
chase. As like as not, you will have been pre- 
viously accosted by a polite personage, anxious 
to show you the sights of the town, and give 
you the advantage of his superior experience 
for nothing. He is a ddlal, or broker, and the 
sign that passes from him to the shopkeeper will 
put an extra ten or even twenty-five per cent, on 
the shop's price-list. These are all temporary 
Jacks in Office, who are exploiting your purse for 
their own benefit. Your groom, when he brings 



8o Indian Life 

you the bill for shoeing your horse, blandly debits 
the amount at twenty pence, whereof fourpence 
goes into his pocket. This dustoorie is paid with- 
out a murmur by shopkeepers, who know it is the 
only way to retain custom. Were it refused, they 
would soon find your patronage transferred, for 
means would be taken to render what they sup- 
plied an abomination by deliberately spoiling it. 
Kven Government accepts the system, and if out 
in the jungles you hire a score of coolies or half a 
dozen mules to carry your baggage, there will be 
an odd half-anna for the hire of each, which is the 
agent's dustoorie. 

All India sits, or desires to sit, at the receipt of 
custom. Financial morality admits it as perfectly 
legitimate, and King Custom condones it. So 
long as it is a sort of allowable brokerage for 
poking your nose into another man's affairs, per- 
haps no great harm is done. But the system has 
ploughed the ground for Jack in Ofiice, and pre- 
pared it for that cropping with corruption which 
is one of the ugliest features of the administration 
of the Indian Empire. 




CHAPTER VI 



MKN-AT-ARMS AND SOM^ OTHERS 



UNTlIy the Pax Britta7iica turned swords into 
ploughshares, India was an ideal land for 
the soldier. In its social system, the fighting 
castes trod close on the heels of the privileged 
priestly one, and men-at-arms were as sand on the 
seashore. For those who were fortunate there 
were kingdoms to be won, and for all, adventure 
and pillage. The feudal system which obtained 
presented countless posts of command, and a bold 
heart seldom had to wait long for promotion. 
But in this peaceful generation the soldier's sun 
has set, and there is only employ for a quarter 
of a million of men, where a century ago three 
millions would have been a moderate estimate of 
the aggregate strength of the standing armies 
permanently employed. 

Except in the military stations, known as 
* ' Camps " or " Cantonments, ' ' which correspond 
to English garrison towns, the Indian soldier is 
as little in evidence in the daily life of town and 
country as his brother-in-arms in England. His 
profession, however, continues to hold its high 
' 81 



82 Indian Life 

place in popular esteem, and to have a relation in 
the army creates a feeling of pride. In popular 
assemblies, the * * sepoy ' ' is accorded a place of 
honour, and is not debarred admission to the seats 
of the high, and in private life he is an object of 
respect and admiration, not to say envy. Nor is 
this to be wondered at, for he is remarkably well 
paid and treated. In a country where, as a vice- 
roy has stated, the average monthly income of the 
population is five shillings and fourpence sterling, 
the soldier draws a comparatively princely pay 
of nine shillings and fourpence when he enlists 
(wherewith he has to feed, but not to lodge him- 
self), rising by handsome increments to thirteen 
shillings and fourpence. When he has accom- 
plished a sufi&ciently long service he retires on a 
munificent pension of tuppence ha'penny a day. 
So you may put it that he is able to live in luxury 
and die in comfort. 

Then, again, he is elevated by the prestige 
which attaches to military service under the ruling 
power of an empire ruled by the sword. He is a 
Jack in Office, but generally unobjectionable. 
Army discipline and the nature of his calling lift 
him far above the blood-sucking myrmidons of 
the civil administration, and, apart from his pro- 
fession, as when he is at home on furlough or has 
retired on his pension, it is ever a pleasure to meet 
him. It happened that for some years I employed 
a large body of native labourers, amongst them 
many boys of sixteen to twenty, of whom a few 



Men-at-Arms and Some Others 83 

here and there used to enlist. And when they 
next turned up, and came to make their salaam, 
well-set, smart, soldierly, respectful men, but with 
the national characteristic of servility eradicated, 
it was a delight to note the improvement in them. 
They seemed to have benefited as much under 
Government military service as their fellows 
who went into the police and other civil em- 
ployments had degenerated, and they verified 
the assertion sometimes made by old martinet 
drill-sergeants, that there is no school like the 
army. 

The native of India in private life is a slovenly 
man when he is in the habit of wearing clothes; 
the very fashion of his costume is a premium on 
untidiness, and his detestation of physical exer- 
tion makes him a sloucher. You may tell a sepoy 
by his carriage as easily as you can a London 
policeman by his boots. And when he is in uni- 
form there are few more picturesque soldiers in 
the Empire, as London has observed and noted. 
Hodge, translated from the plough to the parade- 
ground is a difficult subject to etherialise, even 
when you dress him up in a scarlet coat; but 
Kareem Bux and Poorun Singh, togged out in 
khaki "to kill," with smsiTt pugg-arz, accoutre- 
ments, and arms, seldom fail to do justice to their 
cloth, especially if they come of one of the superior 
fighting races, whose physique only needs the 
drill-sergeant to bring out. its admirable points. 
Kven the little Ghoorka, with his bow-legs, squat 



84 Indian Life 

frame, and Mongolian features, presents a pleasing 
picture of smartness in uniform. 

In Kngland, there are four international groups 
of fighting-men associated with the four divisions 
of the United Kingdom and Ireland. In India, 
as befits its cosmopolitan nature, the martial races 
are numerous, and merely to catalogue them 
would fill a page, and leave only bewilderment 
behind. The Indian soldier always serves with 
his fellows, whether it be in a regiment composed 
exclusively of his own caste or race, or in a 
"mixed" regiment, in which some companies 
are of one, some of another caste. Racial feeling 
runs strong, and leads to great emulation, and 
the older corps, who have a history (the Mutinies 
terminated the majority of them), are as proud 
and tenacious of their traditions as the most 
famous of British and Irish regiments. 

In the piping times of peace, the Indian soldier 
is a singularly peaceful man. Where his caste 
permits, his womenfolk live in barracks with him, 
and the cantonment is a small city in its way, 
with its own bazaar, its numerous " followers," 
and innumerable wives and children. Very inter- 
esting and curious is it to note the way in which 
these latter learn to drill and fit themselves for 
their father's profession, which, in this land 
of inherited occupations, they usually follow ; 
and to see the little chaps, down to veritable 
toddlers, going through regimental evolutions 
and manoeuvres with the precision of the parade- 



Men-at-Arms and Some Others 85 

ground, is an object-lesson in the hereditary- 
tendency. 

The British public has a very fair idea of the 
Indian soldier or trooper from the opportunities 
of study presented by the representative bodies 
that have from time to time paraded the streets 
of London. Looking at their fine stalwart figures, 
at the mere height, weight, bulk, and girth of 
some of them, it is difficult to credit the simplicity 
of their fare and the frugality of their lives in 
their native land. Most of them are vegetarians, 
and those big-boned frames and brawny muscles 
are innocent of any bolstering up with flesh food. 
Even in a country where meat sells at a penny a 
pound, the sepoy (putting his caste aside) cannot 
afford such luxuries as beef, mutton, or goat, ex- 
cept on high days and hoHdays. Wheat and In- 
dian corn are his staple food. In drinking, he is 
even more temperate, confining himself to water 
and milk. It is not our ideal diet for a martial 
folk; but what shall we saj^ when we come to his 
idea of a "treat "? Not for him the amber ale of 
the canteen, or the nut-brown rum associated 
with splicing the main-brace. Give him a good 
junket of sweetmeats or treacle! You cannot 
offer him anything he appreciates or enjoys more. 

In short, the man-at-arms of modern India is 
no longer a blustering, blood-drinking, pillaging 
freebooter, but a temperate, orderly, well-behaved 
individual, who sends a great portion of his pay 
home to his people in his native village, or 



86 Indian Life 

deposits it in the regimental bank. Notwithstand- 
ing, when it comes to the day of battle, you shall 
find him not a whit less brave than those heroic 
fighters who faced the Knghsh at Laswarrie, So- 
braon, and ChilHanwallah. Under British ofiicers 
there are few tasks he will not attempt, and as the 
Sikhs proved at Saraghari, the Ghoorkas at Dar- 
gai, and many of the other races in the briUiant 
military annals of India, Jack Sepoy is a first- 
rate fighting-man. 

When you come to the soldierj^ of the native 
states, there is another tale to tell, with the excep- 
tion of the Imperial Service troops, lately intro- 
duced, who are as fine material as any commander 
could wish to lead. For the rest, the rajahs' ir- 
regulars fully deserve the designation of rag-tag 
and bob-tail usually applied to them, and in a 
service where the pay is not only poor, but pro- 
blematical, and the pension to seek, they are apt 
to degenerate into Jacks in Ofl&ce of the predatory 
sort. But they serve the useful purpose of re- 
minding us what the man-at-arms of India was in 
the past, and engender a pleasant sense of satis- 
faction at what he has developed into under British 
rule. 

So much for the administrative and military 
classes, the Jacks in Office objectionable and un- 
objectionable, who loom large in the eye, although 
they only represent a minute fraction of the total 
population of India. They are men of assured 
employment and pay, and by reason of it stand 



Men-at-Arms and Some Others 87 

out as a privileged class. The Indian Empire, it 
must be remembered, is an empire of paupers ; 
nine out of ten are agriculturists, and we have 
seen what are the conditions of the peasant's life. 
The trading classes can be passed without par- 
ticular description, whilst we take a glance at 
some of those callings which are indigenous to 
the soil, and have an established place in the 
economy of daily life in India. 

And first of all the barber, no insignificant per- 
sonage in the East, where every man is obliged 
to shave, and forbidden by his religion to operate 
on himself. The barber has an official appoint- 
ment in the Hindu village, with an endowment 
of land to support its dignity, and a vested right 
to the shaving of its inhabitants, which can be 
protected by legal injunction in case of infringe- 
ment. With the exception of a few races, every 
native of India shaves his head, and not a few of 
them their faces. Amongst the Hindus, the busi- 
ness is compulsory, for sin is supposed to adhere 
to the hairs of the head, and they can undertake 
no religious ceremony or rite without being di- 
vested of their locks. The dead are always 
shaved prior to cremation, and shaving the face 
by the survivors is the outward and visible sign 
of mourning. The Mahomedan, too, shaves his 
head (leaving a tuft for the Prophet to pull him 
into heaven by) but never his chin, although he 
clips his moustache close to his upper lip, thereby 
often spoiling the effect of a magnificent beard. 



88 Indian Life 

The Indian barber attends his customer, not 
the customer the barber's shop. This carries him 
into the home-life of the people in a way which is 
open to no other calling. He enjoys an even 
greater reputation for gossip than the barber in 
other countries, and might, indeed, be termed a 
peripatetic " Daily Male." From the nature of 
his business, he has become the matrimonial agent 
of the Bast, and, with his wife, arranges most of 
the alliances, being the accredited go-between and 
matchmaker of Hindustan. He is skilful with 
the razor, and will cut your nails, clean your ears, 
and manicure you after his fashion. He travels 
about with a little bag under his arm, containing 
his instruments, and the looking-glass, which 
plays a most important part in his profession. 
There is no more essential personage in the daily 
life of the East than the barber, without whose 
aid the marriage market would languish, and the 
dead carry with them to the other world as many 
sins as there are hairs on their heads, for such is 
the superstition of Hinduism. 

Another important individual is the astrologer, 
who is naturally a Brahmin, and often the family 
priest. He, too, may be said to be indispensable 
to the Hindu, for he is supposed to be able to 
avert all sorts of evil influences in a country which 
is crushed by superstition; where a child who 
accidentally kicks its foot against a stone makes 
a salaam to it to propitiate the evil spirit, and the 
man who ascends a ladder mutters a pious prayer 



Men-at-Arms and Some Others 89 

to it not to collapse under his weight. No pru- 
dent Hindu does anything material without first 
consulting the family astrologer. When a child 
is born, the Brahmin casts its horoscope; when a 
marriage is arranged, he fixes the auspicious day 
and hour; when a journey has to be undertaken, 
he advises the time to start; and he has his say in 
the initiation or completion of every important 
business. In marriages especially, he is a despot, 
and there are extended periods during the year 
when no Hindu would dream of marrying. In 
his priestly character, the astrologer blesses houses 
and wells, consecrates new idols, purifies people 
who have accidentally slipped from caste, and 
officiates at weddings and funerals, for all of which 
he draws his fees. He is a prodigious humbug, 
who earns a very nice income by charlatanism. 

We are accustomed to speak of the * ' humble ' ' 
potter, perhaps because he works with mud. But 
the potter in India is an artist, and there are three 
and a half millions in the land. As there are 
men, mustard manufacturers to wit, who make 
their fortunes out of what is thrown down the 
sink, so the Indian potter makes much of his live- 
lihood by what is cast on the dust-heap. The 
poorer class natives of India dine ofi" the rudest 
earthenware platters, and there is a caste prejudice 
against using the same dish twice, which creates 
an immense demand for cooking pots and plates. 
Water is always stored in pitchers, and we know 
what happens to the pitcher that goes to the well. 



90 Indian Life 

The Indian pitcher is called a gurrah, and is cir- 
cular-shaped, with a small mouth. It contains 
as much water as you would ordinarily care to 
lift, and its price is three farthings if you buy a 
rupee's worth, or a penny for one. Such a thing 
as a metal water-can was practically unknown in 
India until within the last decade, when the 
empty five-gallon kerosene-tin has been adapted 
to that purpose, much to the prejudice of the pot- 
ter. However, he has a monopoly of making clay 
gods and roofing tiles. Sir George Birdwood, in 
his striking book on the Industrial Arts of India ^ 
displays an enthusiasm about the potter, * ' under 
whose hand the shapeless heap of clay grows into 
all sorts of faultless forms of archaic fictile art." 
The potter is a hereditary village officer, and re- 
ceives certain very comfortable fees. His position 
is respected, and he enjoys the privilege of beating 
the drum at merry-makings. He shares with the 
barber a useful and lucrative place in the com- 
munity, and there is probably no member of it 
who is happier in his lot, and less liable to the 
vicissitudes of fortune. 

The mention of the drum recalls to mind the 
musicians and dancers of the East, who are in 
great request at all festivities. The dancing-girl 
will be dealt with in another chapter, for she 
deserves more than an incidental notice. The 
musical artist plays upon a variety of instruments, 
skin, string, and wind, and manages to evoke 
from these, sounds that convey the maximum of 



Men-at-Arms and Some Others 91 

discord to English ears. Performers apparently 
derive more pleasure from beating a drum than 
the average British four-year-old in the nursery. 
Moreover, their music, such as it is, goes on for 
ever. Having engaged his band of musicians, 
the Indian employer insists on having his money's 
worth. The Oriental concert lasts as long as a 
cricket match. Tomtoming and twangtwanging, 
varied with constant and inconsequent blasts from 
a horn, continue from morn to long past midnight. 
The orchestra sits in a semicircle on the ground 
with stolid, solemn faces, which periodically break 
out into terrifying grimaces as they expel a series 
of notes intended to be song. That the native ear 
enjoys it, there can be no doubt, but it is equally 
certain that it enjoys English music played out of 
tune. One of the most curious importations into 
India is what is known in England as the * ' Ger- 
man Band. ' ' This has become a recognised insti- 
tution in the East, and has superseded the native 
one as being more noisy, I imagine, and more 
fashionable. The instruments, with the exception 
of the drums, are all of brass, and there is a de- 
cided partiality for those which assume the shapes 
of antediluvian monsters, and wind about the 
person. I remember one such band visiting the 
jungle I resided in during a particularly auspicious 
marriage month. Its repertoire consisted of four 
or five tunes, which it repeated with a maddening 
monotony, and all out of tune. A very favourite 
tune with these wandering minstrels is For He's a 



92 Indian Life 

yolly Good Fellow, and another, Yankee Doodle, 
and they are played indiscriminately at marriages 
and funerals. The social status of the musician 
is low — which it decidedly deserves to be. 

Entertainers in India are always *'on tour," for 
there are no fixed places of amusement. Con- 
jurers, acrobats, monkey men, bear leaders, snake 
charmers, perambulate the country, picking up a 
precarious living. They * * pitch ' ' where they 
can, like Punch and Judy men. I do not remem- 
ber ever to have seen one who could be considered 
anything but a beggar; but the better class are 
probably confined to the palaces of the rajahs 
and the houses of the wealthy. The population 
is too practical and joyless to waste money on 
amusement; the native never gives a hearty 
laugh, indeed, it is a breach of good manners to 
do so. How shall you expect him to pay for the 
pleasure of laughing or being amused ? He scorns 
delights; nothing shocks his sense of propriety so 
much as a ball, and he calls a picnic a '* lunatic 
feed. ' ' You may look in vain throughout India 
for such means of entertainment as a picture- 
gallery, a music-hall, a promenade-pier, a recrea- 
tion-ground, a magazine, an illustrated or comic 
paper, a pleasure-boat, a horse-race, a regatta, or 
a museum, except where the Englishman has 
established them. These things are quite outside 
the genius of the people. 

The native Indian doctor is a quack pure and 
simple, who works much with nostrums, incanta- 



Men-at-Arms and Some Others 93 

tions, and charms. When he is called in, it is 
often as a resident, for he proceeds to take up his 
abode in the patient's house, and lives there as 
long as he decently can. He has no diploma or 
qualification, and any one is at liberty to practise 
the healing art if he can get patients. His re- 
putation is made by word of mouth, and did you 
analyse the result of his practice, you would prob- 
ably find he was a wholesale manslaughterer. In 
India, no death-certificate is required, and the 
coroner is unknown. It is no exaggeration to say 
that hundreds of thousands die annually from 
preventable causes. Cremation follows death in 
twelve hours at the utmost, often in three or four, 
and inquests are impracticable. Speedy disposal 
of the dead is not only a climatic necessity but a 
religious duty. No one may eat whilst a corpse 
is in the house. Nay, this rule is extended in 
some cases, and in my plantation, no one might 
eat whilst a corpse remained within the boundaries 
of it, and, when one of my coolies died, it meant 
the entire establishment fasting until he was car- 
ried out to be burnt. Under such conditions, in- 
vestigation into the cause of death is impossible, 
and when you add to them the privacy of the 
zenana system for women, you arrive at a pre- 
mium on secret assassination. That this is largely 
practised in India, there can be no doubt. 

But the native doctor assassinates openly, and 
his instrument is ignorance. He divides all mala- 
dies into ' * hot ' ' ones and ' ' cold ' ' ones. Bleeding 



94 Indian Life 

is as favourite a remedy with him as it was in 
England a hundred years ago. Every native of 
India, well or ill, is periodically bled, and would 
conceive himself in mortal danger if he omitted it. 
A common domestic cure for a headache is a 
plaster of cow-dung smeared over the forehead. 
There are many useful drugs in the Indian phar- 
macopoeia, but quantity rather than quality seems 
to appeal to the native mind. I have often been 
informed with pride that the mixture prescribed 
by a certain baid or hakim contained ten, fifteen, 
or twenty ingredients, as though efficacy lay in 
numbers. In this connection, I may notice one 
thing, namely the quick and beneficial effect 
medicine has on the vegetarian constitution, 
which seems to respond to treatment much more 
easily than that of the flesh-eating European. I 
have been astounded sometimes at the * ' cures ' * 
effected by a dose of chloradyne and a mustard 
plaster, which seemed to ' ' touch the spot ' ' with 
miraculous precision. In my plantation, I dosed 
many hundreds of coolies for many years with not 
more than half a dozen drugs, and though I have 
just previously referred to defunct labourers, I 
have few sad memories in that connection, whilst, 
on the other hand, I have many very satisfactory 
recollections of men restored to health who ap- 
peared far more ill than I should like to be. 

Perhaps the most important personage in India, 
if you bear in mind the influence he wields, is the 
village headman. The village system is com- 



Men-at-Arms and Some Others 95 

munal, and the lumberdar or patel is the hered- 
itary functionary who governs it. He is the link 
between the villagers and the Government, and 
collects the taxes, on which he draws a dustoorie 
of five per cent. He has many privileges, as one 
in authority, and makes the most of them; but if 
he squeezes where he can, he is, on the whole, 
very loyal to his flock. He is much more than a 
tax-collector«^ or a mayor, being invested with a 
patriarchal prestige, and, if he is a man of force 
of character, exerts great personal influence. In 
the first place, he is the recognised mouthpiece of 
the community he governs; then he is called in 
to settle disputes, expected to entertain strangers, 
and the effective working of the village machinery 
depends upon him. His charity is frequently en- 
croached upon to relieve the needy. For another 
of the anomalies of India is that, although it is 
the poorest country in the British Empire, and 
boasts a civilisation two thousand years old, there 
is absolutely no provision for the poor throughout 
the length and breadth of the land. The charita- 
ble instinct of the people is the only thing that 
stands between its poor, its aged, its infirm, and 
death by starvation . Only when a famine scourges 
the land does Government grant any * ' relief, ' ' 
and in this Empire of paupers there is not such a 
thing as a poorhouse! 

Whereby begging has become a recognised in- 
stitution and sometimes a lucrative profession in 
India. The poor and needy we may pass over 



96 Indian Life 

with the remark that they are desperately poor 
and pathetically needy. The crippled and de- 
formed require notice. Such loathsome and ter- 
rible sights as you may see are too horrible to 
attempt to describe. Perhaps the worst of all are 
the lepers, who infest the highways, and when 
they fail in obtaining compassion have a power 
of compulsion in cursing; for a ** leper's curse" 
is a calamity few will dare to encounter, and the 
leper vituperates roundly when he conceives he 
has a cause. 

Apart from those miserable creatures who owe 
their deformities or diseases to Providence, there 
is a large class who maim and deform themselves 
in the name of religion, and trade upon their de- 
formities. You see them in thousands at the 
places of pilgrimage, with shrivelled limbs, 
withered from deliberate disuse, and other in- 
credibly dreadful contortions, contractions, and 
deformities. These are not impostors, but men 
who have wittingly maimed themselves and 
thereby incurred a certain character for sanctity. 
The tortures they must have endured before the 
limb dried up from disuse, or the finger-nail grew 
through the palm, or the uplifted arm was stiffened 
in its posture above the head, appeal vividly to the 
charitable eye, and represent their stock-in-trade 
as professional beggars. Kings amongst them 
are the fakirs, and other religious mendicants, 
who clothe their nakedness in ashes, roam the 
land in thousands, and batten on the superstition 



Men-at-Arms and Some Others 97 

of the people. These have no self-inflicted de- 
formity to parade; inherent holiness is their cue, 
and their craft a complete knowledge of the weak- 
ness of womankind. Impudent, lazy, good-for- 
nothing rogues, many of them grow fat, and do 
far worse things in the course of their abominable 
careers, practising their arts and seductions, and 
under the specious guise of asceticism living the 
lives of debauchees and blackmailers. 

India is a strange country of contrasts; and one 
of the strangest of them is the stark poverty of the 
starving, industrious peasant, and the sleek im- 
pudence of the lazy, improvident beggar, who 
masquerades as a holy man and lives comfortably 
on the charity of the neediest nation in the world. 




CHAPTKR VII 

IvADIE^S I<AST 

LADIES first," we say in the West ; in the 
Kast it is " lyadies last." That sums up 
succinctly the difference in the domestic ideas of 
the two civilisations. 

There are one hundred and forty millions of wo- 
men in India, and their sphere is the backyard. 
This is literally correct of about ten millions, and 
metaphorically so of the rest. They are not even 
accorded a back seat in society, for in the presence 
of men they are not permitted to be seated. The 
whole duty of woman is to worship and wait upon 
her husband (who is her lord and master in its 
most exacting sense), and to bear him sons. In 
some classes, she had better be barren than bear 
only daughters. And if she is a high- caste Hindu, 
the very wisest thing she can do is to die when 
her husband does, for after that she becomes a 
cursed superfluity in the community. This again 
is literal. 

Five sixths of the upper ten millions of Indian 
women live secluded in hareem or zenana; the 
terms are synonymous for the "women's quar- 
98 



Ladies Last 99 

ters," but the former is only applied to Mahome- 
dan households. No male, except the woman's 
husband, father-in-law, and brothers-in-law, ever 
passes the threshold of this privacy, therefore no 
European, except a woman, can write about it, 
except from second-hand. An Englishman may 
spend twenty years in India and not see the faces 
of twenty zena7ia women, and then only by acci- 
dent. The most he will be able to observe is their 
be-ringed toes in transit, as when they are smug- 
gled, with prodigious caution, out of a litter into 
a railway-carriage, veiled almost to suffocation, 
or with curtains held up round about them like 
little perambulating bathing-tents. In some Ma- 
homedan cities, streets have been cleared for the 
passage of dames of high degree, and there are 
authentic cases of high-class Mahomedans having 
killed their wives because their faces were ac- 
cidentally exposed to a fellow-man. Some Blue- 
beard Hindus have done as much to theirs by way 
of precaution. 

There are races that do not seclude their women- 
folk, and castes who allow theirs more or less free- 
dom; the masses have a great deal too much work 
for their wives to do to permit them the luxury 
of seclusion. But whether free or confined in 
hareem or zenana, it is always ** ladies last." 

The custom of secluding women is of Mahome- 
dan origin, and its adoption was forced on the 
Hindus after the conquest of India by the fol- 
lowers of the Prophet, who were sad rakes. The 



loo Indian Life 

system is now firmly rooted amongst the higher 
castes, and some, in particular, are insanely jealous 
about the privacy of their wives. There is no 
chivalry in India, and a dastard want of con- 
fidence in the chastity of his womankind is the 
most contemptible national trait of the average 
native. Kvery right-minded Englishman would 
itch to kick the Hindu or Mahomedan who put 
into language his views about the weaker sex. 

The inferiority and infirmity of woman is a part 
of the Mahomedan' s creed. He has no respect for 
her, and the heaven he hopes to win is peopled 
with mythical houris, who are young and beauti- 
ful damsels. The white-bearded patriarch looks 
forward to meeting these, not the wife who may 
have been his faithful partner for a lifetime. The 
indulgence of an unbounded sensuality is the Ma- 
homedan' s highest reward in a future state. In 
his present existence, self-gratification is tempered 
by circumstances. The Koran allows him four 
wives at a time, and divorce at pleasure. But 
the economics of population and the expense of 
matrimony make general polygamy impracticable, 
and only about five per cent, of the Mahomedans 
of India have more than one wife. But whether 
one or four, she or they are mere chattels and in- 
struments of their husband's pleasure. In his 
treatment and assessment of the sex, you may 
measure the standard of his moral conceptions. 

The sexual status of the Hindu woman is even 
worse than that of her Mahomedan sister. The 



Ladies Last loi 

Institutes of Manu, the great lawgiver of Hindu- 
ism, define her position very clearly. The wife is 
the marital property of the husband, and is classi- 
fied with cows, mares, she-camels, buffalo-cows, 
she- goats, and ewes. She is not accounted worthy 
of separate holy rites, fasts, or ceremonies in a 
religion which is compounded of them. All she 
has to do is literally to worship her husband, who 
is repeatedly described as a virtuous woman's god. 
The husband, on the other hand, is enjoined ''not 
to love his wife too much," but only to let her 
have that degree of affection which is necessary. 
' ' The fulness of affection must be reserved for 
brothers and other similar connections." 

It redounds to the credit of the Hindu woman 
that in the face of these demoralising and degrad- 
ing limitations she should be affectionate, faithful, 
chaste, industrious, obedient, patient, forgiving, 
long-suffering, and cheerful. I cull this list of 
domestic virtues from the mouths of her own 
mankind, who praise and imprison her in the 
same breath. From other sources I gather that, 
in the upper classes, she is often vain, frivolous, 
idle, gluttonous, jealous, intriguing, and mali- 
cious. These detractions may probably be ascribed 
as much to the system as to the woman. 

The women who are immured in hareems and 
zenanas are known as purdah-nashin. To be a 
purdah-^omdin carries a certain distinction with 
it. It is an inference of wealth and respectability, 
and a man's social standing in his own class 



I02 Indian Life 

depends a good deal on whether he can afford to 
keep his womenfolk secluded or not. In some 
castes, where it is not enforced by custom, there is 
a tendency to " affect zenana seclusion." The 
women themselves are said to take a pride in it, 
as the Chinese ladies do in contracted feet, and 
where, through a reverse of fortune, zenana ladies 
have been compelled to abandon the purdah to 
seek their livelihood, it has been as a parting from 
respectability. And yet, in our Western view of 
things, zenana life may be likened to imprison- 
ment in the second class. It is confinement of 
the most rigorous description, coupled with segre- 
gation of sex, and deprivation of air, exercise, so- 
ciety, occupation, and scene. But in India, it is 
certainly genteel, not to say obligatory, for most 
who adopt it. 

And we have a consensus of men's opinion in 
declaring that these poor captives are not un- 
happy. Bven lady-missionaries have admitted as 
much. The stale, stock simile of the caged canary 
is quoted, and we are told that absolute ignorance 
of what they lose by confinement prevents any 
hardship in it. Perhaps it is so; there are worse 
fates than that of the well-to-do zenana wife, as 
we shall come to see. 

Of course we hear of unhappiness in the zenana^ 
but it is nearly always attributable to causes other 
than the misery of physical confinement. At the 
same time, we are told the life develops and stimu- 
lates the worst passions, and gives rise to intrigue, 



Ladies Last 103 

jealousy, envy, and murderous hate. Mrs. Bishop, 
the well-known traveller, relates how she had been 
asked more than a hundred times by inmates of 
zenanas for drugs to be used for disfiguring rival 
wives or killing their offspring. Crime is safe 
and easy in the zena7ia, for even the law halts on 
the threshold, and where the husband's favour 
comprehends the entire creed of the wife, poly- 
gamy cannot fail to be fruitful of envy, hatred, 
malice, and all uncharitableness. 

Enforced or voluntary idleness, absence of occu- 
pation, and want of education are greater factors 
for evil than deprivation of physical freedom. In 
the higher ranks of life, the zenana lady lives a 
stagnant existence, and dress and jewels absorb 
most of her time and attention. It is a curious 
thing that, although she may never be seen in 
public, and has no opportunities to display her 
charms, she takes an engrossing interest in her 
personal appearance. Rouge, menddhal, colly- 
rium, and other cosmetics are common in a hareem^ 
and the examination of garments and ornaments 
is the first and almost the sole form of entertain- 
ment when visiting or receiving women friends. 

That life, under such circumstances, becomes 
demoralising goes without saying. The zenana 
woman is mentally and physically stunted and 
crippled. From year's end to year's end a small 
sun-baked court in the day is the only place in 
which she can obtain any exercise, and in city 
life her promenade is often confined to the flat 



104 Indian Life 

roof of the house. No chance of physical de- 
velopment is hers, and the Indian lady is always 
weakly, and often sickly. Consumption is a com- 
mon disease. To be required to walk any dis- 
tance is an actual hardship; when it is possible 
most ladies are carried in litters, and if compelled 
to use their own feet have a peculiar shuffling 
walk that betokens incapacity. Their mental de- 
velopment is equally restricted, and there is no 
ignorance so profound, no inexperience of the 
alphabet of practical life so pitiful, as theirs. At 
the age of thirty, their intellectual attainments are 
less than those of children. They cannot read, 
their range of observation is limited to their prison 
boundaries, and the outer world is absolutely un- 
known to them. Their conversation is inane and 
frivolous, and reflects the emptiness of their 
minds. Their husbands confine their discourse 
with them to domestic affairs, carefully avoiding 
every topic that requires the exertion of reason, 
and the result, in the words of one such husband, 
is " a supine vacuity of thought." 

The hareem has often been called a gilded cage; 
here is a description of one, and the fine lady who 
inhabited it. It was sumptuously furnished with 
the richest and costliest rugs and pillows; the 
divans were draped in different coloured silks to 
suit the season; the vessels for eating and drink- 
ing were of gold and silver, and the bathroom 
lined with full-length mirrors. The lady was 
bathed four or five times a day, and used the most 



i 



Ladies Last 105 

expensive soaps and perfumes to preserve her 
beauty. Her powder boxes were of silver, and 
those for her eyebrow powder of gold; her toilet 
table was covered with silver slabs. Her collec- 
tion of jewels contained every known gem. She 
spent her time in devising new ornaments, and in 
rich eating. Au reste, she did not know her let- 
ters, and was utterly incapable of attending to her 
commonest wants. 

This, of course, was a grande dame. In the less 
favoured ranks, the apartments are more often 
than not squalid, the walls and floors merely 
smeared with cow- dung plaster, and dirt and the 
olfactory evidence of bad sanitation everywhere 
present. The courtyard, into which the rooms 
open out, is filled with the sheds wherein the 
cattle are kept, and the " cage" is a dark, drear, 
unwholesome place to pass a lifetime in. There 
are zenana wives who have never left their hus- 
bands' houses from the time they entered them as 
brides, until they were grandmothers. Conceive 
what that means — a life without a walk in the 
open air! Where the system is obligatory and the 
husband poor, the zenana is a prison too terrible 
to contemplate. 

When you get to those classes which permit 
their womenfolk freedom, the physical improve- 
ment is at once apparent. The Indian woman 
who is not confined is renowned for her grace; 
she is supple, elegant, erect, and, where she is 
called upon to exercise her physical powers, 



io6 Indian Life 

strong. In the labouring ranks of life her powers 
of endurance are marvellous. In the rice-growing 
districts, you may see the peasant women toiling 
from sunrise to sunset, knee-deep in the noisome 
slush, weeding their crops. Their primitive 
standard of civilisation includes many duties as- 
signed to women, such as husking rice, carrying 
loads, using the hoe, and chopping wood, which 
entail terribly hard labour. As carriers, they are 
able to bear extraordinary burdens, and amongst 
the hill women of the Himalayas are individuals 
capable of phenomenal feats. I have frequently 
seen them toiling along under a load of a hundred- 
weight and a half, and there is a record of one 
Thibetan woman who carried a cottage piano on 
her back up a steep ascent of three thousand feet, 
to deliver it at a house in the sanatorium of Dar- 
jeeling. In agricultural and kindred pursuits, the 
women take their share, and often more than 
their share, of the labour of men. What his wife 
can do, that the native husband will always make 
her do. 

Maternity comes easy to the peasant's wife. I 
remember the case of a woman starting off, as she 
believed, the day before her confinement was due, 
to go to her parents' home. The distance was 
twenty miles, and she carried her baggage with 
her, though that does not ordinarily comprehend 
more than a blanket and a water-vessel. Half- 
way on the road to her home she was taken with 
the pangs of labour, gave birth to a child, and 



Ladies Last 107 

then, thinking it not worth while to pursue her 
journey, returned to where she had started from. 
She was the wife of one of my grooms, and I can 
vouch for this story as absolutely correct. 

Notwithstanding the comparative freedom they 
enjoy, the instinct of reserve remains very marked, 
even in the lowest grades of women. I never 
remember to have been addressed first by one, 
though I employed many hundreds on my plan- 
tation. On pay days, when they had to come up 
for their wages, the veriest old harridan would 
veil her face with her sari and take her money 
quite coyly. Although 2,vii2,TAn% chatterboxes 
amongst themselves, they are silent, or at most 
monosyllabic, in men's company. In meeting 
men on the road, they instinctively turn their 
heads from view; but what is a gentle, well-bred 
timidity in the high-caste woman, assumes a sort 
of foolish shamefacedness in her humbler sister, 
the result of conscious sexual inferiority. 

A woman may not walk by the side of her hus- 
band, but only follow respectfully behind him; 
she may not eat with him, but must content her- 
self with his leavings after he has finished. If he 
fasts, the good wife ought to fast too. She must 
not speak with him in the society of others, nor 
may he notice her. In mixed company, the 
man's wife is the last female you would take to 
be such, if you regarded their mutual relations. 
She must never presume to pronounce his name; 
he is always " my lord," or " my master." She 



io8 Indian Life 

has absolutely no part in society; she may not 
make herself heard; she has no opinion; she may 
not seat herself in the company of men. It is a 
gross breach of etiquette to ask a husband how 
his wife is. * * How is your house ? " is the limit 
of courtesy even amongst old friends. Abject 
submission at home has created in the woman a 
sense of helplessness and bewilderment abroad. 
She is as * ' lost " as a nun might be. The custom 
which prescribes her conduct towards her husband 
is far stricter in its regulation of her behaviour to- 
wards others of his sex. " Whether a woman be 
old or young," lays down Manu, the lawgiver, 
" she must ever be dependent. In her childhood, 
she must be in subjection to her parents; in her 
youth, to her husband; and in her old age, to her 
children." And from highest to lowest, from 
purdah-nashin to peasant wench, this rule of life 
is inflexibly adhered to. It is ladies last and 
ladies least in every grade of society. 

The patriarchal system obtains in India, and 
the sons when they marry bring their wives home 
to the paternal roof, whilst the daughters go forth 
to live in their husbands' homes. You may often 
see three or four generations under one roof, and 
no Indian wife is mistress of her home till all her 
elders have died off. All Indian girls are mar- 
ried when they are quite children, and are either 
wives or widows before they are fourteen. Their 
marriage is a complete dissolution of their home 
ties, and opens the door to an absolutely new life. 



Ladies Last 109 

In the higher castes, the father may not visit his 
daughter's home, especially where he has dowered 
her. I have heard a man assert with satisfaction 
that he had not even drunk water from the well 
of the village in which his daughter had gone to 
make her home. 

A native wedding is a tremendous affair. It 
often means years of debt and difficulty, for the 
native is nothing if he is not prodigal on these 
occasions. All his thrifty qualities go by the 
board in one hurricane of extravagance, and it is 
a case of in for a penny, in for a pound, for this 
is an occasion when no one dare be niggardly. 
Here, again, the curse of "custom " creeps in, for 
these lavish displays cannot be defended by any 
rational argument. 

Every one is invited, and there are dinners for 
all; nay, in some cases, seven dinners all round. 
The Brahmins have to be fed and fee'd, musicians 
and dancing-girls hired, fireworks to be exploded, 
rich gifts to be provided, dowries to be scraped 
together, trousseaux to be given which shall bear 
the test of woman's criticism, and litters or horses 
hired to carry the bride and bridegroom. 

This is the one supreme day in the life of an 
Indian woman. Ever since she could understand, 
she has been taught to look forward to it. It is 
associated in her mind with all that is glorious 
and grand. She is arrayed in the splendour of 
vivid colours and tinsel; attention is paid to her; 
for once in her life she is *' somebody." 



no Indian Life 

And her marriage vows ? I^isten to what the 
sacred Hindu books say: '' There is no other god 
on earth for a woman except her husband. Be 
he deformed, aged, infirm, diseased, offensive in 
manners, choleric, debauched, immoral, a drunk- 
ard, a gambler, a lunatic, blind, deaf, dumb, or 
crippled; in a word, let his defects and wicked- 
ness be what they may, a wife should lavish on 
him all her attention." That is the risk every 
Hindu girl has to accept with a stranger before 
she is twelve years old. After her wedding, she 
returns to her father's house until she is physi- 
cally old enough to go to her husband's. 

The Mahomedan girl's life is somewhat better, 
for she is not married until she is of an age to join 
her husband. Moreover, she has certain ' ' rights, ' ' 
one of which is the power to divorce her husband. 
Also, she may marry again. But neither Hindu 
nor Mahomedan brides have the slightest voice in 
the selection of their spouses. 

In all India, there is only one class of women 
which emerges from the fetters of ignorance, 
reserve, and abject submission. This is the 
nautch-girl, or dancing-girl. She is a professional 
prostitute and public entertainer. It is necessary to 
educate her to fit her for her profession and duties, 
and so it comes to pass that she can read. She is 
early instructed in this, and also in singing and 
dancing, and all the accomplishments. She begins 
to chant lewd songs as soon as she has finished 
prattling, and for centuries has enjoyed the sole 



Ladies Last m 

monopoly of education amongst Indian woman- 
kind. And — can it be believed ? — the nautch-girl 
has not only a recognised, but an exalted, place in 
the religious and social life of the Hindus. No dis- 
credit attaches to her calling, but, on the contrary, 
a great deal of iclat. She is considered a neces- 
sary adjunct in the temple and the home. Her 
presence at weddings is auspicious, and she it 
is who fastens the wedding-necklace round the 
bride's neck, an act which corresponds to the plac- 
ing of the wedding-ring with us. In her profes- 
sional capacity, she is invited to all native festivals, 
and to entertainments given in honour of guests. 
To patronise her is considered meritorious, and 
she fills a place in the Hindu religion correspond- 
ing to that which the nun holds in Christianity, 
for she is consecrated to one or other of the impure 
Hindu deities. A proverbial saying declares that 
without the jingling of the nautch-girl's anklets 
a dwelling-place does not become pure! 

She is a beautiful abomination who has lured 
thousands, and will lure thousands more, to ruin. 
Attractive, pleasing, and witty in conversation, 
she is the most accomplished of courtesans, and 
specially educated to play havoc with men's 
morals and money. She is treated by all castes 
with the utmost deference, and even allowed to 
sit in the assemblies of the great by men who 
would not permit their own wives and daughters 
a similar honour. She moves more freely in so- 
ciety than public women in civilised countries are 



112 Indian Life 

allowed to do, and greater attention and respect 
are shown to her than to married women. In 
some parts of India, she is treated with the dis- 
tinction of a princess. 

The earnings of these dancing-girls are enorm- 
ous. In Bombay the "star" nautch-girls com- 
mand a fee of fifty pounds for a single night's 
performance. Aristocratic families lavish their 
wealth on them, and a British viceroy, who was 
memorialised by the Hindu Social Reform Asso- 
ciation to discountenance them on the grounds 
that they were ** professional prostitutes, lowered 
the tone of society, tended to destroy family life, 
and brought ruin to property and character" 
— a British viceroy answered that * ' he had seen 
nothing objectionable in the nautches he had wit- 
nessed; they were in accordance with the custom of 
the country, and he declined to take any action." 
Truly, great is " custom," and it will prevail! 

To these educated courtesans, the Hindu gentle- 
man habitually turns when he desires the com- 
panionship his own home cannot supply. And, 
be it noted, without any stigma or suspicion of 
wrong-doing. The nautch-girls are the onl)^ wo- 
men who move freely in men's society in India; 
they are the women who are honoured and courted 
most; for them alone is education decreed. They 
are the queens of native society. It is a salient 
commentary on the domestic life of the Indian 
Empire that the woman who comes last in the 
British estimate of the sex comes first in theirs. 



CHAPTER VIII 
woman's wrongs 

WOMAN'S Rights" is the unabashed de- 
mand of the New Woman in the West; 
*' Woman's Wrongs " is the whispered appeal of 
the few who dare ventilate the subject in the Kast, 
where native social reformers have been outcasted 
and excommunicated for striving to improve the 
domestic position of the weaker sex. Those two 
cries crystallise the contrast between the women 
of the two worlds. Up to now, we have been con- 
templating woman's life in India from its best 
point of view — the virtuous wife not discontented 
with her lot, the accomplished courtesan queening 
it in society. Each in her lights and in her sphere 
is to be reckoned fortunate and happy. We now 
pass to the consideration of darker pictures. 

There are four hideous horrors in the treatment 
accorded to the female sex in India — child-mar- 
riage, enforced widowhood, compulsory prostitu- 
tion, fostered by religion, and infanticide confined 
to female infants. In comparison with the three 
former, the latter may almost be said to be 
humane. 

8 

"3 



114 Indian Life 

Infanticide is daughter- slaughter, and is chiefly 
practised by the rajpoots, who have a reputation 
for chivalry towards women! It is a direct out- 
come of caste and custom, and an act of callous 
selfishness. The Hindu religion makes the mar- 
riage of a daughter obligatory, and threatens the 
parents with the most dire punishment if it is 
postponed after the year of puberty — punishment 
on a par with other Hindu religious penalties, 
which ordinarily include disgrace in this life and 
several million years in hell in the next. In the 
case of the rajpoot, the social rule requires him 
to procure as a husband for his daughter a man 
of a higher clan than his own. This is often 
difficult, and always expensive. The payment of 
a large dowry can be avoided only by incurring 
the stigma of an inferior alliance, against which 
the abnormal rajpoot pride revolts. He cuts the 
Gordian knot by the simple process of killing his 
infant daughter, either by strangling at birth, 
giving her an opium pill, covering the mother's 
nipple with poison to be taken in with the first 
sustenance, or by neglect and starvation. Under 
native rule the practice was universal ; under the 
British Government it has been greatly reduced, 
but has not disappeared altogether. A writer in 
1818 mentions that amongst the offspring of eight 
thousand rajpoots in a particular district there 
were probably not more than thirty females living 
of the same caste or clan as the men. When the 
Infanticide Act of 1890 was passed, the worst case 



Woman's Wrongs 115 

quoted, as proving its necessity, was that of a 
tribe where the proportion of girls to boys alive 
was eight to eighty. In one district several hund- 
red children were returned as * * carried off by 
wolves, ' ' all of whom were girls ! The difficulty 
of the detection, and through it the prevention, 
of this crime lies in the fact that the murderer un- 
doubtedly possesses the sympathy of his fellow- 
caste men. The death of a daughter, before the 
expense of marrying her has to be incurred, is a 
matter for devout thankfulness and cordial con- 
gratulation in many cases. 

Thus we see that woman's wrongs in India be- 
gin with her birth, when she is sometimes killed, 
and assuredly never welcomed. The next in- 
justice is the disposal of her person in chiidhood, 
which does not always take the form of marrying 
her to a husband. The Hindu religion requires 
brides for the idols who represent its deities. 
They are called Devidasis, Muralis, and other 
names, and their duties are to dance at the shrines, 
sing obscene hymns, and generally delight the 
gods, and pander to the lusts or avarice of the 
priests of the temples. They are a recognised 
religious institution . 

These temple girls are obtained when quite 
young by purchase or gift. In the former case, 
the parents sell their daughters when they are 
children ; in the latter, the girl is a thank-offering 
made by Hindus of certain castes for recovery from 
illness or relief from misfortune. Occasionally 



ii6 Indian Life 

a man presents his own offspring, but if lie is 
rich, it is considered more respectable to buy a 
poor person's daughter and present her. But in 
neither case is there any sense of shame attached 
to the sacrifice, and in the contorted morality of 
the Hindus, the profession to which the girl is 
consigned is a most honourable one, and carnal 
intercourse with the temple girls * ' an act of faith 
and worship, and, according to some writers, it 
effaces all sins "! There are thousands of these 
poor girl-slaves in the temples of India, who are 
the common property of the priests, and were 
consigned to their infamous lives in the name of 
religion whilst they were yet, what we should 
call, **in the nursery." If they give birth to 
daughters, the latter are always brought up in the 
mother's profession. There is no lack of recruits, 
who are accepted from all castes. Sometimes 
there is an initiatory ceremony, when the girl is 
formally married to a dagger, the wedding being 
conducted with all the pomp and circumstance 
that would be observed in her marriage to a 
husband. 

The temple girl is the only Hindu woman who 
has any place or share in the rites and observances 
of religion, and in the same way that her pro- 
fessional sister, the nautch-girl, holds a most 
esteemed place in Hindu society, so the Devidasi 
stands next in importance to the holy priests who 
sacrifice at the shrine. In some of the temples, 
the religious establishments are enormous, as for 



Woman's Wrongs 117 

instance at that of Juggernauth at Puree, where 
about six hundred persons are employed, '^he 
idol is treated as if it were a human being; there 
are officiating priests to perform such offices for it 
as taking it to bed, awakening it, giving it water, 
washing its face, offering it a toothbrush, count- 
ing its robes, feeding it with rice, carrying its 
umbrella, and telling it the time. And to delight 
the idol, but more particularly the priests, there 
are a hundred and twenty temple girls, who exer- 
cise a religious ministry, and are termed brides of 
the gods. 

Perhaps the most inhuman wrong practised on 
the women of India is child-marriage. As I 
have mentioned, every Hindu girl is a wife or 
widow at fourteen, and in many parts of India 
much younger. Girls have actually been married 
before they were a year old, and when from four 
to six years of age, they very commonly cease to 
be "single." Kight is a marriageable age, and 
twelve is the maximum, except in a few districts. 
Consummation of marriage takes place at the ear- 
liest possible date nature allows, and it is here 
that revolting abuse has long established itself. 

The surrender of a child-wife to her husband 
at a totally immature age has been the custom in 
India for all ages. It is one of those iniquitous 
institutions with which the British Government 
has ever been chary of dealing, for it stops short 
of actual murder. But about ten years ago, the 
publication of the terrible and tragic details in 



ii8 Indian Life 

connection with the death of a child-bride raised 
such a storm of indignation that it compelled 
legislation in the name of civilisation, and the 
' * age of consent ' ' was raised to twelve years by 
enactment. Prior to this, many marriages had 
been consummated at ten. But to legislate and 
to carry legislation into effect in the zenana are 
two very different things, and when legislation 
goes against old-established custom and religion, 
it often becomes inoperative. Nearly fifty years 
ago, Irord Canning legalised the remarriage of 
widows, but the statistics of to-day show that out 
of approximately twent)^- three millions of Hindu 
widows only about twenty-five are remarried an- 
nually! The Hindu considers it wrong to with- 
hold a wife from her husband when she has 
reached the age of puberty, and no legislation can 
prevent it when the parents of the bride and the 
husband's household are in agreement. 

Of course, the physical development in a tropical 
country explains in a measure what would be im- 
possible in our own. Instances are on record of 
Hindu women being great-grandmothers at forty- 
eight, each generation having given birth to 
daughters at the age of twelve. Wives have been 
sent to their husbands' houses at the age of eight. 
Nor does the inhumanity of it end here, for al- 
though child-wives are more frequently married 
to child-husbands, there are hundreds of thou- 
sands of cases where the husband is a man of forty, 
fifty, or even sixty, and the child-wife may be his 



Woman's Wrongs 119 

fourth or fifth. The State of Mysore, which in 
this respect is considerably in advance of the rest 
of India, passed a law in 1894 prohibiting the 
marriage of girls under eight years of age, and 
absolutely forbidding the marriage of men of 
fifty and upwards with girls under fourteen. A 
similar Marriage Bill introduced into the Madras 
Legislative Council was rejected, and the British 
Government, with its peculiar sensitiveness to in- 
terfering with the social customs of the natives, 
has done nothing. 

It would be impossible to exaggerate the evils 
of child-marriage. Physically, it leads to torture, 
deformity, constitutional ill-health, and, as has 
been indicated, even to death by violence. It 
produces weak and sickly offspring, and nips the 
sentiment of maternal love. I have heard of a 
child- mother who was accustomed slyly to pinch 
her infant to make it cry, so as to induce her 
elders to take it, and release her to play. Happy 
for the child- wife if she has the spirit to play! 
When she goes to her husband's house, it is to an 
utterly strange place, where, under the patriarchal 
system of the Hindus, she has to subordinate her- 
self not only to her mother-in-law, but to all the 
elder generation of women in the house. It is 
pitiable for the child- wife, torn from a home that 
contained all she knew of happiness, to be obliged 
to submit herself to the temper, caprice, and often 
tyranny of her husband, but when to this is 
added the despotism and cruelty of several elderly 



I20 Indian Life 

women, who often avail themselves of her helpless- 
ness, and if she fails to find favour in her husband's 
eyes, almost invariably take their cue of unkind 
conduct from him, her lot may be better imagined 
than described. She has absolutely no place to 
go to for comfort and sympathy if it is not to be 
found in her new home. There is no escape, 
and no matter what her sufferings, her parents' 
home is closed to her. An appeal to them meets 
with a rigid command to submit herself to her 
husband. 

Mrs. Fuller, in her book on the Wrongs of Indian 
Womanhood, gives a very pitiful illustration of an 
unhappy child-marriage, which may be taken as 
typical of thousands of others. A young Brahmin 
lad of sixteen was married to a girl of nine, who 
went to reside with him a year later. '' The girl's 
appearance did not suit the young husband, and 
if she went near him to serve him with food, he 
would hit her on the crown of her head with his 
knuckles. Though she was but ten, yet they ex- 
pected her to do every kind of work. She did the 
household work, brought water for all, cleaned 
the utensils and floor, did the washing, milked 
the cow, and kept its stable clean. If the cow did 
not yield the proper quantity of milk, she was 
punished. . . . Her father-in-law would hang 
her up to the beam of the roof and beat her piti- 
lessly. He would sometimes suspend her to the 
same place by her ankles, and under her head, 
thus suspended, place a vessel with red-hot coals, 



Woman's Wrongs 121 

on which he sprinkled red pepper to almost suffo- 
cate her. Sometimes, when he had hung her to 
the rope, for fear she should be tempted to break 
the rope, and fall, he would lay branches of prickly 
pear on the floor beneath her. Once or twice, this 
man inflicted on her punishments which decency 
forbids us to relate. . . . When her father 
heard of all this cruelty, he exhorted her not to 
run away, but to stay and die." In those last 
three words, you may sum up the life sentence that 
Hinduism passes on the Indian wife. The father 
would have been disgraced had his daughter left 
her brutal husband's home, and the woman's 
wrongs did not count in the balance when his , 
own interests were threatened. ./ 

You might think that under such conditions I 
widowhood would become a compensation, instead t 
of which it is the crowning curse of Indian woman- 
hood. For twenty centuries, the custom of suttee | 
or the self-immolation of widows, existed in India, 1 
and presents the best commentary on the state of | 
widowhood. Even within the last twenty years, \ 
cases have occurred in the native State of Nepaul. ** 

It is true that the act of suttee was held to be 
most meritorious, and supposed to secure the 
widow three hundred and fifty million years of 
connubial felicity, and assure salvation to her 
family for seven generations; but such visionary 
rewards probably had less influence in inducing 
widows to face the frightful ordeal than the 
knowledge of what their future lot would be. 



\ 



122 Indian Life 

The lot of the Hindu widow has not changed, and, 
in the words of one of the social reformers of the 
race, it is described as " Cold Suttee." 

Briefly speaking, the Hindu widow is con- 
demned to perpetual mourning, mortification, and 
degradation. Her first sacrifice is her hair, which 
is shaved off, the popular belief being that it binds 
her husband's soul in hell until she parts with it. 
In which connection, I may mention the case of 
an old man and his wife who caught the plague; 
he predeceased her by four hours, and yet, in the 
interim, although she was senseless and moribund, 
her head was shaved. To return to the widow's 
lot. She is compelled to dress in the commonest 
and coarsest garments, to relinquish all her orna- 
ments and jewels, and to display no emblem and 
enjoy no privilege of the married state. She may 
eat only one meal a day and has to fast twice a 
month. She is precluded from attending any 
festivity, must never presume to feast or try to 
enjoy herself, and be careful not to allow her 
shadow to fall on food or water that is about to 
be eaten or drunk. She is regarded as carrying 
ill-luck with her wherever she goes, and her ap- 
pearance is inauspicious. A man starting on a 
journey will postpone it if he catches sight of a 
widow as he sets out, and the good widow will 
shrink back when she meets or crosses a man's 
path for fear of being the harbinger of evil to him. 
If she has borne no children to her husband, she is 
burned without the rites of religion. It is, per- 



Woman's Wrongs 123 

haps, necessary to explain specifically that all 
these things tend to her spiritual exaltation. 

A middle-aged widow who has borne children 
can manage to support this degraded existence. 
If she is the mother of a son, a sort of clemency is 
extended to her, for she has performed the first, 
and immeasurably the greatest, duty of Indian 
womanhood. Only by his son, begotten in law- 
ful wedlock, performing certain exequial rites and 
ceremonies can a father be delivered from one of 
the Hindu hells; failure to bear a son is a first 
cause for introducing a second wife into the hus- 
band's house. A widow who has borne only 
daughters may find comfort in them. But the 
child-widow, whose husband has died when she 
was, perhaps, only six or seven years old, and to 
whom it was impossible to fulfil the prime duty of 
a wife — for her is reserved the crudest and most 
unjust treatment of any. She is peculiarly repug- 
nant to the community, one to whom no consid- 
eration or pardon can be extended, but only the 
unreasonable and unremitting hatred and abuse of 
her husband's people. For widowhood is regarded 
as a punishment for the sins committed by the 
woman, and the failure to bear a son is the Sin 
Unpardonable. 

It is difficult to imagine anything more tragi- 
cal or pathetic than the unfolding of this fate 
to the child -widow. She is too young to know 
what has happened, or only comprehends it 
very vaguely. She continues to play with her 



124 Indian Life 

companions, for slie is not called upon to enter 
the state of widowhood until she reaches the age 
of puberty. As a child, it makes little differ- 
ence in her life, saving for a bitter word cast at 
her now and then, the reason for which she 
does not understand, or her hasty ejectment as a 
bad omen what time she may have unconsciously 
wandered into the proximity of a wedding-feast 
or some other festivity. But at length there comes 
a day when womanhood overtakes her, and she 
who never committed any sin has to suffer. The 
barber is called in, and her hair is shaved off; her 
bright clothes are taken away from her, and she 
is told that henceforth she must wear the sackcloth 
of mourning; her jewels, if she has any, are dis- 
tributed amongst others; and she enters into a life 
of social ostracism. For what reason ? For being 
the relict of a husband whose face she saw but once. 
More probably than not of a child-husband, and 
when you come to consider the statistics of mor- 
tality amongst children, you may gather some 
idea of the risk encountered by the Hindu bride 
when she enters into the state of matrimony! 

Such a system and such treatment naturally 
lead to terrible results. Life becomes hopeless 
and intolerable, and frequently ends in suicide or 
enters into shame. In most cases, the child- 
widow has become the slave and drudge of the 
household; no work is too hard to impose upon 
her, and she is a stranger to any kindness or con- 
sideration. Probably she has a little more free- 



Woman's Wrongs 125 

dom than the wife is allowed, and there come to 
her temptations which may not be resisted. And 
if she succumbs to them, who can blame her ? 

Very frequently she falls into the clutches of the 
Brahmins, and is enjoined to make a pilgrimage 
to one of the holy cities to pray for her husband. 
The men of the temples are amorous, and the 
idols do not disdain young and pretty widows. 
It is natural for Hindu as for English widows to 
seek the solace of their religion. Bindraban is 
one of the holiest places of pilgrimage; there 
Krishna is worshipped, and to his shrine flock 
countless hosts of pilgrims, amongst them a vast 
number of widows. Here are the experiences and 
observations of one which have been recorded 
from her own lips. 

** When we arrived at Bindraban, the priests of 
the place met us at the railway station, and got 
us a house, which was so filthy we could not en- 
dure it. We sought another, and found a good 
one belonging to a holy man. When he saw us 
women, he was very anxious for us to stay, but we 
knew what it meant, and left immediately. . . . 
The Brahmins' agents tell the widows, whom 
they seek in the villages and towns, that they will 
go to heaven if they proceed to these sacred 
places, and live there, and serve the priests, and 
worship the god Krishna. The poor ignorant 
women are easily persuaded to leave their homes, 
as many of them are very unhappy, and think it 
is far better to go and live and die in sanctuary, 



126 Indian Life 

serving Krislina. Thus thousands of widows, 
young and old, go to Mathura or Bindraban, 
and fall into the snares of the priests. They soon 
expend the little they have in giving alms and 
presents to priests, and when all is spent, cannot 
return to their native land. Then, if they are 
tolerably young and good-looking, the holy men, 
saints, and religious mendicants are all after them, 
and get them to live in their houses, first as serv- 
ants, then as mistresses. Or they hire them out 
to other men in the towns and villages. If the 
women are unwilling to lead immoral lives, they 
are told it is no sin to live thus in the service of 
Krishna. When they get old and displeasing to 
the men, they are turned out to shift for them- 
selves, ragged, helpless, seemingly forsaken by 
all, and left to die like dogs. . . . We went 
round the town, and saw the condition of these 
women. There were thousands of widows, mostly 
from Bengal, and the heartless cruelty of man to 
woman, which we saw on every side, is almost 
beyond description." 

Woman's wrongs are everywhere man's rights 
in India: the right to kill in infancy; the right to 
ruin; the right to coerce; the right to ill-treat. 
Kngland has emancipated the African slave; her 
laws have protected the brute creation from 
cruelty. What is wanted in the twentieth century 
is a Wilberforce to rescue Indian womankind from 
her slavery, and a legislation to teach her lord and 
master the instincts of common humanity. 



CHAPTER IX 

THK INDIAN AT HOMK 

IT would require a thousand interviewers to re- 
port on ' * The Indian at Home ' ' in all his 
phases. From the palace of the rajah to the hut 
of the ryot ; from the furnished mansions of the 
Kuropeanised Parsees to the cave dwellings of 
some of the religious devotees ; from the Swiss 
chalet-like cottages of the Himalayan mountain- 
eers, perched high on craig, to the boats on the 
sea and river that give residence to an amphibious 
population ; from the tents of the nomadic tribes 
in the deserts and the tree that shelters some of 
the pastoral ^aces, to the crowded ant-nests of 
humanity in some of the city caravanserais, — from 
all these specimens of town and country life, city 
and jungle life, river and desert life, it is impos- 
sible to make a typical selection. 

'' There is safety in mediocrity," I was once in- 
formed by a Bengali baboo, who inclined to a 
middle course. And perchance a middle-class 
Hindu's house in Bengal will give us a sufficiently 
good idea of domestic life. I am beholden for my 
127 



128 Indian Life 

details to two or three Hindu gentlemen who 
have written on the subject. 

The house is that of a well-to-do retired trades- 
man, let us say, who can afford to live comfort- 
ably. He is an elderly man, but his old crone of 
a mother is still alive, his four sons are all mar- 
ried, and have children, whilst two of his brothers 
and a son, deceased, have left widows, who, under 
the patriarchal system, all dwell under the same 
roof. It is a little commune, where the money 
earners contribute their wages to a common purse, 
from which the expenditure is apportioned by the 
head of the house, and where the womenfolk un- 
dertake all the domestic duties, with considerably 
more than their share foisted on the widows, ex- 
cept the old grandmother who rules in the zenana. 
Children tumble about promiscuously, and there 
is a general sensation of over-population within the 
walls. Privacy there is none, saving the funda- 
mental privacy which partitions off the women's 
from the men's quarters. 

The house stands in a garden, well cultivated, 
and containing a well or tank, and several shady 
trees. It is double storied, and the upper floor is 
reached by a cramped corkscrew staircase. The 
ground plan forms three sides of a square, with a 
courtyard in the centre, and the fourth side con- 
tains a ddlldny or open reception-hall, which is a 
sort of general room, drawing-room (no ladies ad- 
mitted), clubroom, schoolroom, and chapel. The 
most distinctive feature of the building are its 



The Indian at Home 129 

verandahs. The interior is barn-like, owing to the 
absence of all furniture, and your first impression, 
as a European, is that of entering a disused house. 
One or two of the ground-floor rooms may be 
paved, but those upstairs are plastered with a 
coating of cow- dung over a layer of earth, as wood 
is not considered clean enough to eat off of. The 
walls are distempered, such a thing as wall-paper 
being unknown in India, where the damp of the 
rainy season would soon peel off that which the 
white ants spared. If you are permitted to peep 
into the zenana, in the absence of the inmates, 
you will see a little more decoration than in the 
men's quarters; but even here the most noticeable 
article is a commodious bed, and a few rude pic- 
tures painted on the walls are the only relief to 
the general suggestion of bareness. In lieu of 
chairs, there are small rugs or mats for the women 
to sit on, and the narrow windows are grated, not 
glazed. The whole interior is singularly dark 
and gloomy. There is no glass- or china-ware, 
brass taking their place, and you particularly ob- 
serve the brass spittoons placed conspicuously 
about. 

The karta, or head of the family, is a fat and 
elderly gentleman, whose costume consists of a 
single sheet wrapped round his waist, much as 
Englishmen adjust a bathing- towel on issuing 
from their tubs. We should call him a scanda- 
lously indecent old fellow, but you will find that 
all the men in the house adopt this principle of 



130 - Indian Life 

semi-nudity in their homes. Here, too, the tur- 
ban is generally laid aside, and, needless to say, 
all the shoes have been left at the threshold, just 
as Europeans leave hats on a hall-stand. The 
karta's head is shaved, except for a tuft on the 
back centre of the poll; he wears a necklace of 
beads to assist him in his prayers, and a * ' sacred 
thread ' ' girdles him from shoulder to waist, which 
is the insignia of his high caste. His brown naked 
skin shines from its polish of mustard oil, a very 
favourite application, and his chief employment is 
squatting on his hunkers and smoking a hookah. 
The routine of household life is singularly simple. 
At the earliest sign of dawn, for all India is awake 
and stirring long before sunrise, the widows of the 
house come stealing down from the upper rooms 
to perform their ablutions, which, in the chilly 
morning air of the cold weather, consist of a per- 
functory pouring of water over hands and face, to 
be followed by a bath later in the day. The 
sweeping and dusting of the house is a very simple 
operation, and where the floor is the common 
table, it is necessarily kept scrupulously clean. 
Then follows the milking of the cows and goats, 
for every one who can, keeps these in a country 
where milk takes the place of tea, coffee, cocoa, 
ale, wine, and spirits. The drawing of water also 
is no slight task where the household is a large 
one, but it is not necessary for washing pur- 
poses, as everybody goes to the well or tank for 
that purpose, and even the women bathe in the 



The Indian at Home 131 

open, changing their wet garments for dry ones 
with such quickness and dexterity as to deceive 
the eye like a conjurer's trick. 

By this time, the men of the house will be be- 
ginning to stir, and custom demands that the 
women should retire to their own part of the 
building. Dressing with the men is a simple 
affair, but their ablutions take a long time, being 
accompanied by an immense amount of teeth- 
washing and expectoration. Cleansed and puri- 
fied, the worship of the household gods next 
demands attention. These are rather images 
than idols. In a niche of a room, squatting upon 
its own little altar, is the representation of the 
deity the family worship. In front of this, puja 
has to be made, and its precincts sprinkled with 
rice and flowers. There is more punctuality about 
family prayers in Bengal than in Britain, only 
ladies are not admitted. After this observance, 
hookahs are lighted, and the lords and masters 
while away the time until the womenfolk serve 
the morning meal, which is the principal one of 
the day. 

In those houses where the expense can be af- 
forded, a Brahmin is kept as cook, for any one can 
eat of what he has prepared, whilst if the women 
of the house do the cooking, only those of the same 
caste can be entertained. It requires no small 
amount of skill to obtain variety and tempt the 
appetite with the somewhat limited resources of a 
Hindu larder. You may enumerate the contents 



132 Indian Life 

as ghee (rancid butter), oil, spices, vegetables, 
grain, and fish, which is a permissible diet, and 
almost a staple where a river or the sea is at hand. 
Allowing for the difference of taste, Hindu culin- 
ary science leaves crude British methods far be- 
hind. The possibilities of rice have never been 
suspected in England, where it is only imported 
to be barbarously treated, whereas, properly 
boiled, spiced, and flavoured, it has inherent 
capabilities not inferior to maccaroni. Cooking is 
a universal accomplishment in the East; amongst 
those who profess the art are chefs whose skill is 
exquisite, such for instance as the Mugs of Chitta- 
gong; but apart from the professional cook, ' 'every 
schoolboy" can prepare his own dinner, and when 
in service every man is his own cook. 

The Bengali's menu is varied, and his appetite 
enormous. Measure for measure, your Indian will 
far outstrip the European in eating capacity. On 
the floor, four or five large dishes and as many 
small ones figure, consisting of soup, fish, currie, 
rice, cakes, puddings, porridge, pulse, and fruit, 
but very different in their component parts from 
what the English are accustomed to under the 
same names, and in their order of serving. 

Every one eats with his fingers. The women 
wait upon the men; withal very carefully, for 
each man has his own platter, and to touch it or 
him, even though it is his wife who does so, con- 
taminates his food and renders it uneatable. An- 
other peculiarity of caste is that no individual 



The Indian at Home 133 

may leave his seat until all his fellows have fin- 
ished their meal. Any food remaining uneaten 
has to be thrown away, or given to pariahs, hu- 
man or canine. In some castes, it is essential for 
a man to bathe before partaking of food, and the 
meal is often required to be eaten in nudity, with 
merely a loin-cloth worn. 

After the morning meal those who have oc- 
cupation depart, not to eat again till nightfall, 
unless it be a few sweetmeats to stay the pangs 
of hunger. The master of the family, in such a 
household as I am describing, who has grown-up 
sons to carry on his business, will probably leave 
it to them, and pass his time till the heat of the 
day in smoking and chewing pan, which is a sort 
of * * quid ' ' indulged in inordinately by both men 
and women. It is composed of betel nut, spices, 
and lime, and the spittoons to which I have re- 
ferred are a very necessary adjunct in a house. 
In the heat of the day, every Indian who can 
manage it indulges in a siesta. With the decline 
of the sun at three o'clock, the social hours begin, 
and the men wander forth to * ' eat the air. ' ' Pas- 
times, in the English sense of the word, the Hindu 
has few or none. He does not ride, shoot, or sub- 
ject himself to any physical exertion; indeed, 
such is held to be derogatory. Fishing is an 
exception, and he is remarkably fond of the pisca- 
torial art. He also plays cards or chess occasion- 
ally. But his chief pleasure consists in chattering 
and visiting, disputing and arguing, and if he has 



134 Indian Life 

the chance of dissipation it is freely indulged in. 
His life is full of holidays, which have to be re- 
spected on religious grounds, and afford him 
much scope for the exercise of his lazy and dilet- 
tante idiosyncrasies. 

Meanwhile, the women remain shut up in the 
seclusion of the domestic part of the house, but 
far from idle. The superintendence of the cook- 
ing is in itself a task that occupies a long time, 
and there are three meals to be served, one for the 
men, another for the children, and a third for the 
women themselves. They, too, must have their 
midday nap, and bathing and devotions cannot be 
neglected. Perhaps in the afternoon the Hindu 
lady finds a little spare time for visiting or receiv- 
ing a visit from her women friends, and even 
playing a game of cards. I^ater on, she makes 
her toilette, and although compliments or ad- 
mirers can never come her way, she bestows great 
attention upon her dress and ornaments, and daily 
smears her forehead with the patch of vermilion 
that denotes her married state. In the evening, 
there may be a story-teller, an old woman elo- 
quent with ancient legend, called in to make an 
hour pass, but you will find no such things as 
books, musical instruments, sketching materials, 
or the ordinary diversions and distractions one is 
accustomed to associate with womankind in her 
boudoir. The Bengali lady's costume, it may be 
noted, consists of one piece of cloth wound round 
her body in a way to cover it, but it hardly serves 



The Indian at Home 135 

to conceal the symmetry, and the thin muslins in 
fashion often render it indecorous. In those parts 
of India where the Mahomedan influence has 
made itself most felt, the women wear trousers, 
which are always fashioned of coloured cloth in 
contradistinction to the men's, which are seldom 
anything but white. A more hideous garment 
than the w omsin' s pyj'ama probably does not exist. 
But the Bengali lady is very classically draped, 
and sometimes presents a most voluptuous sight. 

The evening brings supper and the preparations 
for it, and this is the concluding function of the 
day. There is no recreation afterwards, for as 
it is early to rise, so it is early to bed. Indeed, 
in the ill-lighted Hindu house, any recreation, 
except conversation, after dark is practically 
impossible./ 

The home-life of the peasant presents a more 
primitive picture. The distinction of a zenana is 
beyond his means, or, more probably, not neces- 
sary in his caste. His home is a hut, containing a 
single room, the walls of mud, the roof thatched, 
and the interior as bare as a barn. In the 
plains country, he lives in a village in which the 
houses cluster together, a survival of the old 
predatory days of rapine and foray, when men 
had to gather in communities in order to protect 
themselves, and many a field was ploughed and 
many a harvest gathered under an armed guard. 
Even now the custom has survived of enclosing 
villages within a wall, making each a miniature 



136 Indian Life 

stronghold. Around them stretch the cultivated 
lands and fields, not divided by hedges and 
ditches, but apportioned off in tiny plots, inter- 
mingling with one another, their boundaries de- 
fined by low earth banks. A man may possess 
half an acre cut up into half a dozen such plots, 
and interspersed with the holdings of others, like 
the black and white squares on a chess-board. 

The peasant rises early and performs his ablu- 
tions, and in this respect the native of India might 
set an example to his agricultural brother in more 
civilised lands, for he laves himself with water 
very frequently. He is off early to the fields, tak- 
ing some cold food with him to break his fast. 
At noon, his wife brings him his dinner, which is 
generally followed by a sleep. I^rom three till 
sunset, he is again at the plough or whatever work 
is in progress. Ploughing is the only operation 
not shared in by the women, who, in addition to 
helping their husbands in the fields, perform all 
the household work. If the fine zenana lady has 
cause to complain of time hanging heavily on her 
hands, her humbler sister cannot. Apart from 
her domestic duties, there is water to be brought 
in, often entailing a long journey, and fuel to be 
provided. The working up of cow- dung into 
what are familiarly known as ' 'cakes' ' for fuel, and 
plastering them on the side of the hut to dry in 
the sun, absorb no inconsiderable portion of her 
time; or, maybe, wood has to be cut and carried 
from the distant jungle if the house is in a tim- 



The Indian at Home 137 

bered district. At the busy seasons, you may see 
the woman working whilst her husband is enjoy- 
ing his siesta, and it is rarely that any time is 
restful for her. She knows, too, what it is to be 
hungry whilst her husband is satisfied, and the 
pride and satisfaction of " dressing the baby " can 
never be hers, whose children are habitually 
naked. 

The thriftiness of the peasant is marvellous. I 
have often seen the women sweeping the little 
khits, or fields of rice, with a hand-broom after 
harvest to collect the fallen grain, and gathering 
singly those ears that happen to have ripened be- 
fore the bulk of the crop. In the mango season, 
it is not an uncommon thing to suspend one meal 
because sustenance can be derived from the wild 
fruit. And, for waste, the care with which grain 
just sufficient for a meal, no more and no less, is 
estimated, indicates a mind as calculating as it is 
frugal. And this grain, be it noted, except in 
Bengal and other favoured rice-growing districts, 
is rarely rice, which is far too much of a luxury 
for the peasant's fare. His ordinary food consists 
of millet, pulse, and other coarse grain, with salt 
and chillies for a condiment. 

Cattle have been called the peasant's children, 
and next only to himself is his heed for them. 
If you wanted to express the ryot's idea of perfect 
prosperity, you have only to add a yoke of oxen to 
the three acres and a cow which were once held 
out as a lure to the English agricultural voter. 



13^ Indian Life 

There are millions of peasants in India who exist 
on half an acre, and whose cattle for eight months 
in the year are little removed from walking skele- 
tons. In Australia, they allow an acre for each 
sheep; were it possible to allow the same in India 
for the human being, the standard of comfort 
would be considerably increased. 

The native of India has one capacity which 
more civilised people do not possess. He can 
make himself at home anywhere, and adapt him- 
self to all sorts and conditions of places. Away 
from his own home, he experiences no trouble 
about lodging. He will ** fix up " anyhow. His 
bed is a blanket, which he invariably carries with 
him ; his impedimenta a water- vessel and a pan to 
cook his food in. His apartment is a circle swept 
clear and clean on the bare earth, under a tree 
for choice. Except in the colder latitudes, where 
a tent is necessary, there is no need to make any 
arrangements for servants when travelling or 
camping out. They turn in like dogs; on the 
floor of a verandah, at the door of your tent, in the 
stable, under a tree, or sheltered by the bullock 
cart that is carrying 5^our equipage. On the high- 
ways of India, you will see under almost every 
shady tree the ashes of burnt-out fires, which 
represent the camping-grounds of wayfarers. In 
towns and cities, there are places called * * serais, ' ' 
where the charge for accommodation varies from 
a halfpenny to fourpence a night, but they are 
merely open sheds, and many a native prefers to 



I 



The Indian at Home 139 

save his halfpenny and camp under the walls out- 
side. When the crops are ripening, the peasant 
erects a machdn, or elevated squatting place, in 
the middle of his fields, and remains on the watch 
all night to scare away the deer, jackals, wild pig, 
and other predatory animals that loot his crops. 
A man will make a pilgrimage that takes him 
many weeks, and never pay a farthing for lodging 
all the time. Many of the pastoral tribes have no 
roof, except the vault of heaven. ^y 

In city life, the case is very different, and the 
many-storied human warrens of such places as 
Calcutta and Bombay can only be likened to ants' 
nests. In a native city like lyucknow or Hydera- 
bad, where the Mahomedan element predominates, 
and the seclusion of all the women is necessary, 
the overcrowding transcends the Jews' quarters in 
Whitechapel. Under such conditions, caste, and 
even custom, have to give way to convenience, or, 
at least, what is practicable, and domestic privacy 
in its rural state becomes impossible except for the 
wealthy. For rents have to be paid, and that is 
a very disagreeable form of expenditure in a land 
where, although the population is as poor as the 
proverbial church mouse, yet it is a fact that more 
than four fifths of the people pay no rent, but live 
in their own houses! 

To summarise the Indian home, you may say 
that it affords shelter from the sun and rain, and 
supplies that amount of privacy which walls can 
afford. But when you seek for comfort, taste, 



I40 



Indian Life 



and decoration, you seek in vain. In its social 
aspect, it is entirely wanting in that spirit which 
lends enchantment to our own idea of home life, 
and leaves us little cause to regret that in his self- 
ishness and suspicion the native of India is prac- 
tically always ** not at home " to callers. 




CHAPTER X 

IN THK SUNSHINE 

ARK you happy ? " 
' * I am happy. ' ' 

That is one of the commonest forms of saluta- 
tion in the East, cor reispon ding to our " How d' 
you do?"—" Quite well, thank you." But the 
conventional inquiry and stereotyped reply mean 
little. '' I am happy," a man answered me once, 
with a very lugubrious face, who, I learned on 
further questioning, had lost nine of his nearest 
and dearest relations from cholera during the 
three preceding days. 

I am conscious that so far in this attempt to de- 
pict daity life in India the colours used have been 
sombre. It has been unavoidable, for India is a 
land of penury and privation, struggle and star- 
vation, woe and want, for the vast majority. 
England is not ** merrie" when times are hard; 
in India, the times are always more or less hard. 
A popular handbook tells us that the Indian peas- 
ant is at the best of times not far from the verge of 
starvation, and the statement is not exaggerated. 
141 



142 Indian Life 

I harp on the peasant, but, after all, he is nine 
tenths of the country. 

lyet us see what sunshine there is in the lives of 
the native Indians over and above that superabun- 
dance poured upon the land, what are their theo- 
ries of enjoying themselves, their amusements, 
their diversions, and recreations. Prosperity and 
happiness are often synonymous terms, and I 
think material prosperity yields more unalloyed 
delight in the Kast than in the West. There is 
much of the miser in the native of India, and the 
accumulation of money, or its equivalent, brings 
rapture to the brown soul. The money-lender's 
ledger is a book whose perusal brings him more 
pleasure than all the other literature of the East. 
I have seen a spiritual gleam of happiness on the 
face of a shepherd, whose features were ordinarily 
as witless as those of his own sheep and goats, 
what time the lambing season came round, and 
things were going well. And I have often ob- 
served a peasant squatting on one of the banks 
that divided his fields, contemplating his ripening 
crops with a smile that intimated sunshine in his 
soul. The happiest ryot I ever knew was a land- 
less labourer, who, after twenty years of frugality 
and self-denial, saved sufficient to buy himself an 
acre of land. I vow that man was a monument 
of merriness; his face always engendered a sym- 
pathetic grin in mine; it made one happy by infec- 
tion to look at him. * * Happy ! Bigly happy ! ' ' was 
his spontaneous ejaculation every time I met him. 



In the Sunshine 143 

But this, after all, does not describe the sort 
of sunshine the chapter-heading aims at, which 
rather refers to moral than material cheerfulness. 
The basis of happiness in England is home life; 
if a man is happy at home, it makes up for all the 
kicks he gets abroad. How about the home life 
of the native of India ? 

His ideas of domesticity are very foreign to 
ours, and it is difficult to enter into his feel- 
ings. Where he has sons I think probably you 
can account him content. A son is something 
more to him than one to the Kmperor of Austria 
or the Tzar of Russia, for a male child is neces- 
sary to his salvation in a future state. A great 
light beams on his house when a son is born. As 
for his wife, she is quite a secondary consideration; 
she can be replaced, but a son cannot be assured. 
I remember sympathising with a native friend, 
quite a superior man, whose wife and son were 
both dangerously ill. He was filled with anguish 
for the latter, but when I ventured a guarded in- 
quiry ( as etiquette demanded) about the former, 
'' Kuch perwdni! '' was the reply — "No matter 
about her." 

The native is a fond parent, often a doting one. 
He systematically spoils his children. Even a 
daughter, whose advent is dreaded, will worm her 
way into her father's heart. There was another 
native friend of mine I used to visit periodically 
who always had a bed brought out for me to sit 
on, and placed in the shade of a tree in front of 



144 Indian Life 

his house. By-and-by, as I became a familiar 
figure, his little daughter would shyly steal out 
to reconnoitre the sahib, and, growing bolder, 
nestle in her father's lap, and proceed to tease him. 
The thing told its own tale, and I cannot conceive 
that man was anything but happy in his domestic 
relation with that daughter. And when she mar- 
ried at the age of twelve, and left his home for 
good, I often used to think he missed the childish 
caresses, which he accepted before me with such 
an air of apologetic shamefacedness, from a loving 
little girl who would not be denied her demon- 
stration of affection. And I should certainly say 
that the girl-child, so unwelcome at her birth, had 
come to be a ray of sunshine — whilst it lasted — in 
her father's life. 

The inaccessibility of an Indian home makes it 
impossible for the Kuropean to form any trust- 
worthy opinion of its constitutional happiness or 
otherwise. Hindu writers insist on its joys, and, 
while admitting the harsh conditions under which 
they live, declare the womenfolk are contented 
and happy. This may be true, but it is seldom, 
if ever, indicated in the external behaviour or the 
appearance of the females, which rather create the 
idea of a subdued melancholy. But for the men, 
I readily admit that affection for ' * home ' ' in the 
abstract is a feature in their characters; but I 
should hesitate before I committed myself as to 
whether it is for the place or the people in it. It 
is a difl&cult topic to touch on in conversation 



In the Sunshine i45 

with a native, who never * * lets himself out ' ' on 
this aspect of his life. 

Coming to the amusements of the people, you 
find them singularly crude. There are no na- 
tional games, save those the English have intro- 
duced through the medium of schools. Cricket 
and football amongst the schoolboys of the modern 
rising generation are now common enough, but 
they are only played by the educated youth, and 
that in India is the equivalent of what the con- 
ditions in England would be if the great public 
schools monopolised those sports. All the world 
over, children will play, but they have fewer toys 
to play with in India than in any land I know of, 
and leave off playing sooner in life than elsewhere, 
and, as they marry early, grow staid early. I re- 
member talking to a Mahomedan youth twelve 
years of age, the son of a Nawab, who was going 
to England to be educated at Harrow. He was 
married earlier than usual in life for a Mahome- 
dan, because he would be absent when the proper 
time arrived, and his father wanted the match 
secured. He was the most precocious boy I ever 
conversed with, entered into a description of his 
home life, told me his step-mother was very jeal- 
ous of him and he always went in fear that she 
would poison him, described his bride and criti- 
cised her want of accomplishments, and protested 
that he spent his leisure in reading Sadi and the 
Koran. An Englishman of double his age would 
not have talked more seriously and soberly, and 



146 Indian Life 

for his deportment, it was that of a grown-up per- 
son. In my plantation I employed a great num- 
ber of boys from ten or eleven to fifteen or sixteen 
years of age, and I can never call to mind seeing 
them playing out of work-hours. 

The Indian Tamdsha, or entertainment and 
amusement combined, is one where a few perform 
and the many look on. Festivals are far more 
numerous than in England, but (except in the 
case of fairs, with which I shall deal presently) 
frolic enters only into one. The annual Dewali 
festival is a saturnalia of horse-play and inde- 
cency, during which the mild and staid Hindu 
seems to lose his head utterly. He expends his 
energies in sousing everybody he meets with red 
water and yellow powder to a chorus of ' ' Holi, 
holi, holiy' and a commentary of obscene jests 
and jokes. At certain other festivals, he goes in 
for gambling. But his general idea of a Bank 
Holiday has physical laziness at the back of it, 
and a good long sleep or bask in the sun, smoking 
his hookah, affords him all the relaxation and 
enjoyment he seeks. 

Horse-racing is unknown to him; cricket and 
football he does not understand; rowing is the 
privilege of a caste, being a calling; theatres he 
has none; the pleasures of a walk for walking's 
sake are outside his comprehension; " courting " 
is against his custom; reading is beyond his 
powers. If I were asked to summarise his idea 
of thoroughly amusing himself, I should say 



In the Sunshine i47 

sight-seeing. He wants something to look at, not 
something to do. He dislikes manly sports and 
hobbies he has none. The idea of a native train- 
ing for physical proficiency, or bicycling for 
pleasure, or pigsticking, or taking up photo- 
graphy, or going in for botan}^ or collecting any- 
thing for art's sake, is too remote to be considered. 
What are the sports of the great and the rich ? 
Nautch-girls and music, cock-fighting and pitting 
wild animals one against the other, hunting with 
a cheetah, or falconry. A few shoot, but from the 
ease of an elephant's howdah, or for the " pot." 
Ask them to walk up a marsh for snipe and they 
will think you mad. To aim at a flying bird is 
accounted folly by the native shikari. 

Nor is the native capable of deriving any pleas- 
ure from the beauties of nature. A pretty scene, 
a lovely sunset, an artistic blend of colours lack 
the power of appealing to him. His nosegays are 
red and yellow; his finest artists have not the re- 
motest idea of depicting a landscape; he will look 
at an Knglish picture upside down. Music he en- 
joys, but it is the sort of music that sends a Euro- 
pean distracted. He is not ordinarily tickled by 
a joke, and he laughs little, and never loudly. 
There is a certain sour dignity in his code of 
etiquette which debars him from romping with 
children, or indulging in any physical pastime, 
and this repression is extended to those feelings 
the exhibition of which indicates pleasure with 
Europeans. 



H^ Indian Life 

Women are naturally more restricted than men 
in their pleasures and amusements. Kven in the 
zenanas of the rich, books merely mention their 
love of dress and jewellery, as constituting their 
chief pleasure, and story-telling and a game of 
cards are their principal amusements. The re- 
creations of the lower orders are even fewer, and 
perhaps their most enjoyable hour is that when 
the gathering round the well to draw water per- 
mits the luxury of a gossip, which they thoroughly 
appreciate. 

Without doubt, feasting affords the greatest 
general gratification. It is the leading form of 
entertainment. To feast the Brahmins is particu- 
larly enjoined in the sacred books of the Hindus, 
and no ceremony or festival is complete without 
a banquet. Beggars congregate on such occasions 
with the knowledge they will not go away empty. 
In nine cases out often, when your native asks you 
for leave of absence, it is to attend some burra 
khdna, or big dinner. Backslidings from caste in- 
variably require the giving of a feast to secure for- 
giveness and purification . In a land where hunger 
is chronic, and death from starvation periodical, 
it is easy to understand that a full stomach may 
mean the acme of joy. No native feeds oftener 
than twice a day, and in some cases only once. 
They have prodigious powers of eating, and I 
have known men lament their Gargantuan appe- 
tite as a handicap on their livelihood, and put it 
forward as a plea for extra pay. On the other 



In the Sunshine 149 

hand, there is a species of rice which is very ex- 
pensive, and only purchased by the wealthy, be- 
cause (as was explained to me) it is easily digested, 
and you get hungry again within two hours. 
The term ' ' prosper and wax fat ' ' has its many 
illustrations in India, where a man's worldly cir- 
cumstances may be correctly gauged by his cir- 
cumference. Fatness is a charm in women, and 
a cause for envy in men; khub moti (beautifully 
fat) is a common phrase of compliment. Eastern 
life is sensual, and the appetite of the stomach not 
the least source of pleasure. What drinking is in 
the West, that is eating in the East; the medium 
of self-indulgence and conviviality. 

I should also feel inclined to rank idleness as one 
of the chief delights of the Indian. * ' The apathetic 
attitude of contemplative Asia ' ' has been made 
familiar to us in books of travel, but I do not think 
we quite realise what pure enjoyment there is in 
some of that apathy. The native is an adept in 
the art of doing nothing; it never bores him to be 
idle; on the contrary, he seems to take a positive 
pleasure in prolonging his inaction, and will squat 
on his hams by the hour, like a crow on a wall, 
and enjoy it as much as Western people do read- 
ing a novel in an easy armchair, or listening to a 
concert. I would even go so far as to say of the 
average native that he is seldom so happy as when 
he is idle; and outside the islands of the Pacific I 
doubt if you will find a more devoted disciple of 
the dolce far niente. The educated mind and the 



I50 Indian Life 

active body of the mentally and physically ener- 
getic Briton may make him scout such a conten- 
tion, but feed the Anglo-Saxon on vegetable diet 
for three generations, plant him in a tropical 
climate, eliminate from his resources the ability to 
read, and reduce his surroundings to those which 
are within reach of the native, and I fancy he 
would begin to discover unsuspected possibilities 
of enjoying himself in the passive. 

There is one species of amusement which stands 
out in the economy of Indian life as universal and 
supreme, and that is the mela^ or fair. It may be 
a religious festival in honour of some shrine, or a 
great annual gathering like that of Hurdwar, or 
a purely commercial business like the cattle-fairs 
held in various parts of India, but it represents 
the native's most extended idea of dissipation. 
For weeks before, it is the one subject of his an- 
ticipation; for weeks after, the one topic of his 
conversation. It is the single species of festiv- 
ity in which the women have almost as great a 
part as the men; not, of course, the poor zenana 
captives, who are never let out of their prisons, 
but the ordinary native woman who leaves her 
home for a holiday as seldom as the omnibus- 
driver does his box. To them, the fair is what the 
Christmas pantomime is to children who are taken 
to the theatre once a year; their glee is childish, 
and to be forbidden the treat would certainly 
reduce them to tears. 

An Indian fair is a far more picturesque scene 



In the Sunshine 151 

than an English one, and none held in England 
can compete with even a moderate gathering out 
in the East. As the population of India is num- 
bered in hundreds of millions and that of Great 
Britain in tens of millions, so it is with the vast 
and overwhelming multitudes that attend these 
fairs. They gather together such crowds as no- 
thing short of a Coronation or Jubilee can col- 
lect in England. To English eyes, the most 
extraordinary part of the spectacle is the sud- 
den apparition of more women than you ever 
suspected were in the land; one wonders where 
they all spring from, and marvels that so much 
comeliness should remain hidden, if it is lawful 
to be seen. But there is a sort of license allowed 
to women in attending a fair, and for once in a 
way, all their faces are smiling instead of decorous. 
You may live many years in India and form the 
opinion that the women are— I will not say ugly, 
but decidedly unattractive. Go to a fair, and the 
revelation bursts on you that they can hold their 
own in looks with any country in the world. Per- 
haps it is the unaccustomed smile that lights up 
their features — usually prudish and stand-offish in 
the ordinary episodes of life. And yet, no; I can 
call to mind melas in the hill-country, where the 
lighter complexioned races live, which left me 
with a suspicion that, after all, the Anglo-Saxon 
woman might not be so beautiful as the Aryan. 
And one thing is certain about these fairs: they 
serve to bring out the fair. I do not mean an 



152 Indian Life 

abominable pun by that, but the simple statement 
of fact that you see at them a vast number of wo- 
men who are not daily exposed to the sun, and 
realise that the women of India are far lighter 
complexioned than the men. 

And then their dresses! The fashion may be 
two thousand years old, but the wealth of colour, 
the tinsel, the prodigality of silver jewellery taken 
in the mass present such a coup d'ceil as would 
make Ascot or Goodwood look comparatively 
colourless. It is as an Autumn sunset shining upon 
Autumn leaves, all warm and glowing, with the 
glint of running water counterfeited in the abun- 
dant silver necklaces, hair-ornaments, bangles, 
and anklets. The display of jewellery, which as- 
sumes a snobbish aspect with the English, never 
seems excessive in the native woman. I have 
seen her laden with it, and yet could never think 
to myself, ' ' You would look far better if you left 
half of those ornaments at home! " There is no 
* ' snobbishness ' ' in the Indian, except in the case 
of the Kuropeanised native. 

The fun of an Indian fair is noisy and demon- 
strative; the merry-go-round is a feature of it, and 
the music is of the loudest. There are the Oriental 
equivalents of all the itinerant entertainers to 
which one is accustomed in the West, and the 
trash offered for sale is quite equal to that pur- 
chased at a charity bazaar. As a rule, every one 
has money to spend, for all have been saving up 
for this day for months past and temptation to 



In the Sunshine 153 

spend it is spread around. A nation which 
"thinks in cowrie shells" (whereof a hundred 
go to a penny) can probably make sixpence go 
farther than any other, and enjoy the going of it 
more than a people to whom the patronage of a 
penny-in-the slot machine means a bagatelle and 
not a day's wage expended. The slot-machines 
of India would have to be manufactured to re- 
spond to cowrie shells. 

I have altogether forgotten fireworks, which are 
a distinct item in the list of native amusements. 
The evenings are cool, fine nights can be dis- 
counted, and the form of entertainment is one you 
can enjoy sitting at your ease on the ground. 
That meets every requirement of the Bast, and 
fireworks are one of the most popular forms of 
amusement. Illuminations, too, must be men- 
tioned; to a people accustomed to live in the dark 
after nightfall, such exhibitions have a special 
delight, and the Indian chirdg, or oil-lamp, espe- 
cially adapts itself to the occasion. 

If a contented mind is a continual feast, it 
should take little to make the native happy, for 
so little contents him, and his horizon is small. 
He tires slowly of a toy, and in this his otherwise 
childish capacity for enjoyment contrasts with the 
easily tired nature of English children. He will 
listen to the same tune, look at the same perform- 
ance repeated over and over again, without any 
apparent diminution of satisfaction. Music and 
mirth are too rare in his life to bore him easily. 



154 Indian Life 

He cannot have too much of a good thing, and his 
entertainments are seldom affairs of less than 
twelve hours. 

I have left to the last perhaps the most typical, 
as it certainly is the most contradictory, example 
of the * * sunshine of life ' ' in India. Were I asked 
which was the happiest moment of any year to the 
average native, I would say, without hesitation, 
the one in which the sky was dark and threaten- 
ing — the breaking of the monsoon. There is no 
music in India like that of falling rain in May or 
June; no sunshine, literal or metaphorical, that 
can bring such joy as the clouds which sweep up 
from the south-west. What the rising of the Nile 
is to the Egyptian fellah, that and something 
more is the breaking of the rainy season to the 
ryots. Out they come tumbling from huts and 
hovels at the first pitter-patter of the great drops, 
their grateful eyes lifted to the skies, and the 
paean of thankfulness, ''Rdm, Rdm, Mahadeo T' 
bursting from their lips. Here is salvation, here 
not the happiness of a passing hour, but security 
for the whole year. I have myself in that arid 
land felt something of the thrill that follows the 
falling of rain after a long, hot drought, and for 
the poor peasant — well, it may be a paradox, a 
contradiction in terms, but the weeping rain- 
clouds bring the greatest amount of sunshine into 
his life. 



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CHAPTER XI 

THK GOI.DEN KAST 

WE call the East golden and India the 
brightest jewel in the British Crown. 
Let us examine physical and practical facts a 
little more closely, and see whether figurative 
fancies are founded on them. 

The East is so far golden that it is certainly a 
land of sunshine. You can predict a fine day six 
months, or, for the matter of that, six years ahead. 
"Theoretically, you can also predict a rainy one, 
but the clouds are not so consistent as the sun- 
shine. The rainy season sometimes belies its 
name, and then comes famine. In England peo- 
ple grumble at meteorological conditions; curse 
the unwelcome rain, protest against a three weeks' 
drought, and have fault to find with fogs and east 
winds. But, with the exception of a few bronchial 
folk, these climatic freaks do not kill; one is not 
dependent on the skies for life and fortune. The 
Indian is. Two inches of rain withheld in its 
due season will destroy more human life than 
a quarter of a century of European warfare, and 
155 



156 Indian Life 

cause as much human suffering as Bonaparte did 
in his career. 

A very worthy Kentish farmer was grumbling 
to me one day because the rainy summer had 
ruined his hops, half ruined his corn, and damaged 
his hay. **Are your wife and children alive ? " I 
asked him. He replied, with some surprise, in 
the affirmative. ' * Your horses seem pretty 
sleek?" I observed. He admitted they were in 
capital condition. ''And your cows?" Ah, 
they had done well, the pasturage was good. 
''Poultry?" The wife looked after them, and 
she had not complained. " You have not been 
compelled to shut up your house, and leave it to 
look after itself whilst you emigrated?" He 
thought I was a lunatic. ' ' But you say this is 
the very worst season that any man ever suf- 
fered?" Of that he was perfectly sure; he had 
not paid his rent, and some of the wages bill 
would have to come out of his pocket. " Well," 
I said, " if you had been an Indian farmer, and 
this had been the worst season that any man ever 
suffered from, your wife, children, horses, stock, 
and poultry would all be dead, and, presuming 
you had been so lucky as to escape with your life, 
you would be handling a shovel on relief works 
on the west coast of Ireland. " " Gor ! Get out, ' ' 
he said. 

But the analogy is absolutely correct, and 
the possibility of such an experience threatens 
millions of homes every year in India in that 



I 



The Golden East 157 

acute and critical time when the rainy season is 
due. 

For India may be golden in legend, but is not a 
fruitful garden land in fact. Take it, square mile 
for square mile, and it is infinitely more barren 
than fertile. Outside the favoured zones, it is, in 
places populously inhabited, less fruitful than 
Scotland, whilst vast areas are waterless desert 
and sandy waste. You may pass in a railway- 
carriage for hour after hour through long tracts 
of country, where the spiritless vegetation and the 
bare rocky hills appal, and see * 'crops ' ' you would 
think only fit to plough into the ground. 

British ideas of India are often gathered from 
those rich coastal districts which they first settled, 
narrow zones for the most part, or fertile river 
basins like Bengal. But India away from its 
rivers and its cloud-catching mountains is a dry, 
drear land, and the popular conception of its tropic 
prodigality is completely erroneous. It is so bar- 
ren of timber, for instance, that the soil is de- 
prived of the fertilising elements it requires by the 
universal use of cattle manure for fuel, and so dry 
that the fields have to be irrigated by the primitive 
process of the Persian wheel, where a man on a 
treadmill doles the water out of a well in quarts to 
dribble it over his fields in cupfuls. 

Nor are the elements man' s only enemy. Pesti- 
lence and plague scourge him, and fever, insidi- 
ously but surely, kills more every year than 
famine. A great cholera- wave or a plague 



158 Indian Life 

visitation startles people, and arrests the attention 
by the suddenness or magnitude of its holocaust. 
But of fever, infinitely the greatest death-dealer in 
India, comparatively nothing is heard. With its 
alternate shivering and burning fits, that rack the 
system, it is as common in many places as influenza 
in England. You see a man huddled up on the 
ground, shaking and groaning, and hardly trouble 
to ask " What 's the matter? " '* Oh, it 's only 
fever," comes the stereotyped reply. The disease 
is too common to cause the slightest surprise or 
evoke the crudest compassion. The victim must 
go through his bout. He is left on the ground, 
and, vi^hen the fit is over, gets up and goes about 
his work, and continues to do so until the system 
is worn out or a cold contracted, and he ** snuffs 
out. ' ' No inconsiderable portion of the mortality 
in India is '' snufiing out." Sickness is bad 
enough in England, where there is a doctor in 
every community, but in India, where at least two 
hundred million persons cannot get one unless 
they are prepared to walk or be carried to the 
dispensary, which may be twenty or fifty miles 
away, sickness is the half-way house to death. 

I have mentioned the word plague, and the 
reader has probably associated it with the bubonic 
plague; but there are other plagues in Indian life 
similar to those which the Egyptians suffered. 
Wild beasts and venomous reptiles enter into the 
economy of daily life with a shocking freedom. 
Of savage wild beasts, such as the tiger and wolf, 



The Golden East 159 

I will not pause to write; they are too well known 
by repute. But many a peasant's life is rendered 
a burden to him by wild pig, deer, jackals, and 
monkeys. Where a man is dependent on the 
produce of an acre for his sustenance for a year, 
any of the above can dock his commissariat con- 
siderably. The mere driving of them away con- 
stitutes a serious tax on his time. When crops 
are ripening, it means a month of wakeful nights, 
perched upon a platform on poles stuck in his 
field, and I have often been aroused in camp in a 
wooded country by the voice of the sleepy watcher 
hooting at four-footed depredators through the 
night. And this brings me to another reflection. 
How happy would the British agricultural 
labourer be if deer and game were common in 
their fields and open to any one to slay and eat! 
Most parts of India swarm with game; hare, 
partridge, and quail abound round every village; 
many cultivated areas are devastated by deer, ant- 
elope, and wild pig; there are few jungles which 
do not harbour pea-fowl and jungle-fowl, and 
scarce a sheet of water but holds teal and wild- 
duck. But the Indian peasant, unless he is a 
hunter by caste, seldom disturbs them, and the 
men who starve on a diet of pulse and millet take 
no advantage of the sumptuous feast of venison 
and game which can be had for the snaring. In 
some cases, of course, it may be against their caste 
to eat flesh, but in numerous instances it is not, 
and I can only ascribe to the native's listless 



i6o Indian Life 

apathy this rejection of plenty thrown in his path. 
He sadly wants a few lessons in the finer phases 
of the art of poaching. Here, at least, Nature is 
bountiful to him, and he takes no advantage of 
her bounty! 

Snakes, scorpions, and centipedes are amongst 
the inconveniences of native life, and where the 
population goes about with naked feet, the risk is 
much greater than with the booted Kuropean. 
Few Hindus will, however, kill a snake, and the 
foul reptile lives and deals death unscathed. I 
have seen a man guide one out of his path with a 
stick to the accompaniment of apologetic salaams 
and prayers, and I have been besought on bended 
knee not to discharge my gun at one at which it 
was levelled! To the lesser pests of life, flies, 
sand-flies, mosquitoes, et hoc genus, the native 
seems impervious, but he endures much tribula- 
tion from vermin of an unpleasant nature. 

In a country where vegetarianism is adopted by 
most of the people, you would think the art of fruit 
and vegetable growing would be brought to a high 
pitch. But such is not the case. The native palate 
in this respect is terribly coarse — I am talking of 
the commonalty — and assimilates unripe fruit and 
indigestible roots with content, not to say gusto. 
Strong- flavoured turnips and radishes are the 
varieties chiefly vended, and leaf products which 
are equivalent to spinach, but lacking its delicacy 
of flavour. Two or three of the indigenous vege- 
tables commend themselves to English taste, but 



The Golden East i6i 

the majority are such as we would toss to our 
cattle and sheep. Few countries in the world can 
grow more delicious fruit than India, and those 
varieties you purchase in the markets of Calcutta 
or Bombay, where the European and wealthy 
native demand has made their cultivation and de- 
velopment profitable, are things to dream about. 
But they are Covent Garden luxuries to what is 
obtainable in the country at large. The peasant's 
mango bears the same relation to the luscious fruit 
of Bombay as the crab-apple to the Ribstone pip- 
pin, and the plantain of the up-country bazaar 
is appropriately named the *' horse-plantain." 

Meat in India is as bad as it can scarcely fail to 
be in a parched land were you have to kill it and 
eat it the same day. The favourite flesh of the 
native is goat, which is like a very rank, sapless, 
sinewy mutton. The Mahomedans eat beef, but in 
the Hindu centres, the killing of kine is prohibited 
by law. Butter and milk are poor in quality, but 
goat's milk may be accounted an exception. 
The water is universally bad, and, in those locali- 
ties where '* tank " or pond water has to be used, 
too vile and contaminated to be described. The 
contents of a London third-class swimming-bath 
would be as distilled in comparison. 

Food grains, except some of the better classes of 
wheat and rice, are inferior. The sowing of mixed 
crops in the same field, and the crude methods of 
reaping, threshing with cattle treading out the 
straw, and winnowing — every operation conducted 



i62 Indian Life 

on the surface of the bare earth — make the bulk 
dirty and full of foreign substances. The quality, 
too, of some of the commoner sorts of rice renders 
it unfit for European consumption. Probably not 
more than a third of the natives of India eat rice 
as a regular diet; the majority exist on unleavened 
cakes, called chiippattis, made from flour of in- 
ferior grains. These cakes are circular in shape, 
leathery in consistency, and flavourless. They 
require a relish, and have given rise to the chut- 
nies and condiments associated with Indian 
dietary, which are the apotheosis of the crude 
relishes peculiar to the different countries of the 
Kmpire. 

Sweetmeats hold a high place, and the sweet- 
meat shops in the bazaar present a pleasing variety 
and ingenuity, but the ghee, or rancid butter, 
which enters into their composition renders an 
appreciation of them by the English palate impos- 
sible. Of the intoxicating drinks, the use of 
which has increased under British rule, there is 
not one, with the exception of newly drawn 
" toddy," that does not merit the usual epithet of 
"rank poison." They are chiefly consumed by 
the lower classes, opium being the aristocratic in- 
toxicant of the East. In India, it is swallowed, 
not smoked, as in China, and is the daily vice of 
countless slaves to the habit. The smoking of 
bhang, or Indian hemp, is very common amongst 
some orders; it is the most deleterious of drugs, 
producing a state akin to delirium tremens^ and as 



The Golden East 163 

a factor in crime takes the place of drink in Eng- 
land. Amongst the wealthier classes, European 
wines and spirits are commonly consumed, though 
it may be on the sly, and champagne backed with 
brandy is the tipple of many rajahs. 

Crime and litigation give plenty of work in the 
law courts, where three million civil suits and two 
million criminal cases are disposed of annually, 
or, respectively, one in a hundred and one in a 
hundred and fifty of the population — a very high 
average. But the native character finds a positive 
charm in litigation. If lawyers do not grow fat in 
India, it is only because there are so many of 
them. They are as wolfish as the usurers, and, 
after them, the principal cause of the impoverish- 
ment of the people. A vast revenue is raised by 
stamps, every approach to the bench of justice 
having to be made on stamped paper, and court 
fees are one of the heaviest items of litigation. 
Although it is unprofessional, a great number of 
native lawyers tout for clients, and as a body they 
are a grabbing lot. 

You do not require gold to pay wages in the 
Golden East, where silver is the currency, and 
bank or ' * currency ' ' notes the convenient mone- 
tary medium in common use. These notes vary 
from seven and eightpence in value to very large 
amounts, and become, in process of circulation, 
almost as ' * microbic ' ' as the coppers of the coun- 
try. Sixteen is the principal numerical factor; 
sixteen annas make a rupee, sixteen rupees a gold 



1 64 Indian Life 

mohur, and it enters into some of the weights and 
measures. The sixteen-times multiplication table 
is one of the stumbling-blocks that have to be 
surmounted. 

The mention of wages suggests that a list of 
those I paid in a prosperous tea-planting district 
of India may not be without its information. The 
able-bodied men received six and eightpence a 
month, common coolies five and fourpence, 
women four and eightpence, and useful boys four 
shillings, in all cases with huts to live in, but no 
other perquisites, and, of course, without food. 
Men in superior positions, such as gangers and 
overseers, drew from eight to sixteen shillings, 
and the head-carpenter was a comparative Croesus 
on twelve pounds a year. When I first started, in 
the 'seventies, the "English writer," or clerk, was 
paid two pounds a month, but twenty-five years 
later, I could get the work done by better educated 
*' Baboos" for little more than half that salary. 
For less than three pounds a month I engaged a 
" Doctor Baboo," who had passed through the 
medical schools at one of the universities, and 
was a qualified medical practitioner — "qualified to 
kill," some one unkindly suggested! The native 
engineer who had charge, and drove a tolerable 
amount of machinery, was paid two pounds a 
month. All these figures take the rupee at its 
present exchange value. 

These may seem small wages, but " they can 
live on half their pay, and save the other half," 



The Golden East 165 

said my head overseer to me one day when we 
were discussing matters. And then he explained 
how a man on five and fourpence a month ex- 
pended sixteen-pence on thirty-two pounds of 
rice, which served him for a supper for as many 
days, eightpence on thirty pounds of Indian corn, 
which provided a good midday meal, and eight- 
pence on such luxuries as salt, ghee, condiments, 
and lamp-oil; total, two shillings and eightpence, 
on which expenditure those men kept themselves 
in hard-working condition, able to do ten hours' 
hoeing in a stifi" clay soil, a task from which most 
English labourers would have shied off; and for 
carrying burdens no English porter could have 
competed with them. I have frequently de- 
spatched a man with a load of sixty or seventy 
pounds weight on a twenty- four mile journey, 
and he did it, both literally and, in English slang, 
** on his head " — carrying the burden I allude to. 
It may be said that the Indians as a nation are 
as much boggled in debt as the Government of 
Turkey or some of the South American Republics, 
and with as little chance of paying off their lia- 
bilities. The rate of interest in India is usually 
twenty-four per cent., sometimes twelve, very 
rarely nine, and frequently thirty and thirty-six. 
The banks habitually charge the up-country Euro- 
pean ten per cent. It is a curious thing that the 
native, perhaps the most thrifty, prudent, and 
economical man in the world after the Chinese, 
should be utterly reckless in borrowing and 



i66 Indian Life 

litigation. A portion of his neediness arises no 
doubt from want, owing to bad seasons; but in that 
case he goes to the shopkeeper, who, although a 
grasping individual, is moderation compared to 
the extortion of the usurer. It is for his cere- 
monial expenses, his marryings and his funerals, 
that the native runs into debt headlong and 
blindly. The curse of custom compels him to 
this, for it insists he shall be lavish. The debt, 
too, is regarded as one of honour, and although 
he may willingly seek to repudiate or wriggle out 
of a commercial obligation, his code demands that 
he shall not deny the liability incurred for the ex- 
ecution of a religious duty. Moreover, for a man 
who thinks in shell coinage, it is difficult to at- 
tempt to shuffle out of a situation which requires 
him to expend in one week a sum equal to many 
years' income; his very character is bound up in 
the glory of that reckless week; it would never do 
to say it had cost him only five or six pounds 
when all the world had assessed the expenditure 
necessary on such festivities at ten or twenty. 

If he has land, the peasant can always raise a 
loan, but seldom .if ever comes the season when 
the land can repay it. And the usurer who holds 
the mortgage-deed has the law court to go to, that 
fount of British justice which will place him in 
possession of his own, as it has done. " Under 
the British Government the land in India has, to 
a large extent, passed away from the cultivator, ' ' 
writes Sir George Wingate, with the weight of 



The Golden East 167 

authority. '* In Assam, sixty-eight, and in the 
North-west Provinces, nearly forty-eight per cent, 
of the landlords are of the money-lending class. 
In the Punjab, the change is fraught with grave 
political danger. ' ' 

The despotism of usury is weighing heavily on 
the Golden East. Under native rule, these things 
adjusted themselves in the throes of periodical 
change, and the absence of smooth-working legal 
machinery. But under the Pax Britannica, too 
many scoundrels, who prey upon the ignorant 
and poor, come by other people's property which 
they claim as their own on the strength of a lia- 
bility much more than half of which is accrued 
compound interest. The place of the predatory 
Pindaris of the past, who lived by foray and ra- 
pine, has been taken by the money-lender and the 
lawyer, and these latter are the blood-sucking 
vampires who have battened on the want and wit- 
lessness of a population sunk in ignorance and 
apathy, and, under the shadow of British justice, 
live and thrive on the gains of injustice. 

The Golden East! You have but to scratch the 
plating with the nail of your forefinger to find 
that it is a mere tinsel thing which disguises about 
as much real prosperity as the phrase * * the good 
old days when George the Third was King! " 




CHAPTER XII 

ON Tun PATH OF PROGRESS 

** r^AN is not dead in India. The Unchanging 

1 East abides, though not without betray- 
ing by the hem of its garments what ways it has 
been forced to walk in. ' ' 

What ways are those? You may summarise 
them as the Path of Progress. The Unchanging 
East, after reclining for two thousand years on a 
civilisation established before Christ was born, has 
within the last three decades begun to stir on its 
couch, to look around it, to stretch out its foot, 
feeling the path. 

The rude hand of the West has been laid on its 
shoulder and shaken it from its long sleep, and 
the historian of Hindustan must date the awaken- 
ing of India from the second half of the Victorian 
era. Let us count a few of the milestones on this 
path which is just begun. 

First and foremost is the Suez Canal. Then 
steam communication with the West, railways, 
telegraphs, a halfpenny post, irrigation, a fixed 
standard of silver, and education. These are the 
factors that are changing the Unchanging East. 
i68 



On the Path of Progress 169 

The path has been rapidly made; the sleepers are 
aroused and bidden to walk upon it. Whither 
shall it lead them ? Are they, who have only just 
awakened from this long sleep, fit to walk ? Those 
who have ventured the first mile, do they walk 
sedately ? Is the path of progress suited to the 
genius of the Unchanging East ? 

Quien sabe? Time alone can tell. Current 
opinion cannot focus current history. All we can 
do is to write the chronicle of change as it appears 
to us; to note facts and leave inferences to a 
future when their value may be better discrim- 
inated and judged. We are too near the stage 
where the transformation scene is being set. 

Let us glance first at education, which has been 
brought within the reach of the great unread. In 
the opinion of some, it has not been an unmixed 
blessing. In general, it has turned the muddy end 
of the stick into the handle, and, in particular, 
has detached the ferrule from the performance of 
its proper functions. 

The Indian aristocracy and gentry is a little 
apt, like the Bnglish peerage in a previous cen- 
tury, to consider itself above the vulgar necessity 
of education. One of the privileges of being rich 
is being ignorant. Moreover, under the system of 
education which has been introduced, a levelling 
tendency has crept in, which is foreign to the 
spirit of caste. In the Government schools there 
is a mingling of all ranks of society, and, as a fact, 
the trading castes, which are quite contemptible 



170 Indian Life 

to the priestly and warrior ones, are most numer- 
ously represented. If in England reading and 
writing could only be acquired through the me- 
dium of board schools, they might not be such uni- 
versal accomplishments amongst the aristocracy. 

The Hindus are people of receptive intellect, 
and have a remarkable facility for assimilating 
knowledge. In addition, they are marvellously 
industrious and painstaking. They have learned 
that knowledge is power — the only power within 
their reach. In the scheme of their society, the 
Brahmins have ever been the brain-power, and, 
even in the days of Mahomedan ascendency, 
directed the administration. For centuries, they 
monopolised the higher education amongst men, 
as nautch-girls did amongst women. When 
schools and universities were introduced, the in- 
ferior castes were not slow to perceive the op- 
portunity which education aflforded of rising to 
dignity, power, and emolument undreamed of 
before. And although the subtle Brahmin brain 
still retains its ascendency, cunning commercial 
intelligence is fast shouldering it. 

Thus education is beginning to sap at the very 
foundations of Hindu civilisation; it is appropriat- 
ing the power which has hitherto been the mono- 
poly of the priestly caste for the lower orders. 
The native has his son taught English with one 
sole aim in view — a Government appointment. 
There are, of course, other occupations to fall back 
upon, such as the law, a commercial clerkship, 



On the Path of Progress 171 

and so forth. But the come-down is as great as 
that of an Englishman who, having crammed for 
the Indian Civil, is compelled to accept an appoint- 
ment in a bank, or find refuge in the overstocked 
ranks of the bar. 

The Government appointments are few, and the 
applicants many, for the Indian universities turn 
out their wares by the thousand annually, and the 
schools by tens of thousands. The ware is often 
Brummagem, for whilst you can polish the Hindu 
intellect to a very high pitch, you cannot temper 
the Hindu character with those moral and manly 
qualities which are essential for the positions he 
seeks to fill. Moreover, the loaves and fishes fall 
far short of the multitude, and the result is the 
creation of armies of hungry "hopefuls" — the 
name is a literal translation of the vernacular gen- 
eric term omedwdr used in describing them — who 
pass their lives in absolute idleness, waiting on 
the skirts of chance, or gravitate to courses en- 
tirely opposed to those w^hich education intended. 

I have often talked the matter over with native 
friends in the district where I resided, in which 
was a high school where English was taught up 
to a fairly superior standard. It was well at- 
tended by the sons of small traders and well-to-do 
farmers, who formed as good material to draw de- 
ductions from as you could wish. The first thing 
to be noted from the education their boys received 
was that it rendered them absolutely unfitted for 
the occupations their fathers followed in a land 



172 Indian Life 

where callings are hereditary; the second that it 
filled them with an overweening false pride, and 
taught them to despise their fathers. 

** My sons are no good to me whatever," sighed 
my head-overseer to me constantly, who had sent 
his two boys to be educated, and never ceased 
regretting it. "They are too fine to put their 
hands to honest work as I have done these twenty 
years past. They will not even look after the 
farm at home, because they are 'educated.' They 
can get no employment through their education, 
and all they do is to swagger about the house like 
young rajahs, spend money, live in idleness, 
laugh at or abuse every one on the strength of 
their superior knowledge, and constantly disgrace 
themselves because they have no work to do to 
keep them out of mischief! I wish to God I had 
never sent them to school. But I had an idea 
they would both rise to be magistrates and 
judges." The same opinion, in substance, was 
repeated to me by manj^ other fathers, and the 
local schoolboy came to be a byword for the effete, 
impudent, and useless. I have heard my coolie 
boys use their condition as a term of contempt: 
** He cannot prune any better than a schoolboy," 
they would say of a new hand, with a twinkle in 
their eyes as they glanced in the direction of the 
overseer. 

Of these educated youths, at least ninety per 
cent, were choked off higher studies by the ex- 
pense of the university, and left neither fish, flesh, 



On the Path of Progress i "jz 

fowl, nor good red herring, but useful subjects 
spoilt by the useless smattering of English which 
they had received. What of the other ten per cent.? 
A great percentage failed to pass their degrees, and 
returned to the ranks of the unemployed. The 
rest, having acquired the right to the letters B. A. 
after their names, joined the army of '' hopefuls," 
and proceeded to squat down on their haunches 
and wait. But the call seldom came, and after a 
time they filtered into the legal profession, and 
battened on the native love for litigation, or be- 
came demagogues and aired their opinions in the 
native Press, which is often scurrilous and disloyal. 
English education is the natural beginning of 
Europeanising. Very early in the day it takes 
the form of modifying the native costume, and 
the native discontinues shaving his head, adopts 
tailor-made garments, takes to wearing shoes and 
stockings, and only retains his turban as the link 
between him and the caste he has practically re- 
nounced. And now his soul begins to expand, 
and he apes the sahib. The transformation has a 
wondrous effect on his humbler brethren, who 
flatter and fawn on him, whereby his conceit rises 
like the mercury in hot weather. He adopts the 
"English air," and becomes bumptious; certain 
it is his manners are not improved, who mistakes 
a vulgar self-assertion for independence. And he 
looks on the wine when it is red. Such conduct, 
when the beverage is English brandy, is a parting 
from the ways of caste. 



174 Indian Life 

Having thus broken free from the shackles of 
his birth, he desires to distinguish himself in a 
sphere cognate to his new acquirements, and de- 
cides on making a start in Nukkle Sluff^ which 
being interpreted means *' lyocal Self-Govern- 
ment." 

The principle of representative government 
has of recent years been started in India by 
the creation of municipalities and local and dis- 
trict boards, some of the seats on which are filled 
by election. The native is absolutely apathetic 
about them, and when he takes the trouble to vote 
is usually guided by the caste of the candidate. 
The Kuropeanised native, with his glib tongue, 
his superior education, his assurance, and his flat- 
tery, an art he has by no means forgotten, experi- 
ences no difficulty in getting elected. He now 
begins to practice the craft of oratory, and works 
on the minds of men. He is soon deep in jobbery 
and corruption, as the municipalities of Bombay 
and Calcutta have demonstrated. Every Indian 
Nukkle Sluffis a Tammany Hall on a small scale. 

From this sphere the next step is to become a 
" Congress- Wallah,'' which is the height of his 
ambition. In the reign of Lord Ripon there was 
a departure in English policy, and the principles of 
liberalism were sought to be introduced into the 
conservatism of the Hindus. It awakened new 
aspirations in the breast of the native who was 
educated, and from those aspirations sprang a 
National Congress, or annual gathering of repre- 



On the Path of Progress 175 

sentatives from all parts of India, whose adver- 
tised aim was to * ' bring all men of light and 
leading together, to foster a public spirit, to edu- 
cate the people, and familiarise them with the 
working of representative institutions, and to 
demonstrate to the British Government that India 
is ripe for self-government." 

Theoretically a noble programme; but in prac- 
tice it began by passing resolutions approving the 
abolition of the Council of the Secretary of State 
for India, recommended holding the Indian Civil 
Service examinations in India for half the ap- 
pointments, the sanctioning of a native volunteer 
corps, and the repeal of the Arms Act. I need 
not quote more of a policy which, if adopted, 
would place arms in the hands of the natives to 
deluge the land in blood directly native adminis- 
tration and representative institutions brought 
Hindus and Mahomedans — ever ready to fly at 
each other's throats — in contact. And when these 
proposals are made by the spokesmen, self-elected, 
of effeminate races, who shudder at the sight of a 
drawn sword, they dwindle into a farce. Nor are 
they regarded as anything better than a farce in 
India, where the Mahomedans despise the Con- 
gress, the native nobility holds contemptuously 
aloof from it, the peasant does not even know of 
its existence, and the native Press derides it. 

But the Congress- Wallah is blessed with brazen 
lungs and assurance, and able to make himself 
heard far and wide; he has a catchy cry, '* India 



176 Indian Life 

for the Indians," and it finds an echo in some 
quarters in England, where there are folk who 
take him seriously. Self-government in India is 
impossible; the country is too cosmopolitan, the 
racial hatreds too intense. But self-government 
under the Congress- Wa/lak, who represents the 
failures amongst those who set forth to win 
official employ, is a contingency too ludicrous to 
contemplate what time the fierce Mahomedans, 
the stalwart Sikhs, and the fighting Rajpoots — 
silent folks at present — shall begin to take an in- 
terest in the problem. And, after all, what is the 
so-called National Congress but a debating so- 
ciety, which represents the Empire as little as the 
Oxford Union Society represents the United King- 
dom — nay, less; for whereas the Oxford under- 
graduate illustrates much that is best and most 
virile in our life, the Congress- IVallak merely 
represents himself, who is but a cheap stucco 
image operating on a wind-bag. 

This digression has taken me rather further 
than I intended. The moral I would draw is that 
Western education grafted on Eastern character 
is an impossible combination. " The educated 
native," says Mr. Lilly, in his admirable book on 
the Problems of India, "is in no sense a repre- 
sentative of the great mass of the inhabitants 
of India, and has no sort of influence with them. 
The vast bulk of the population, the cultivators 
of the land, know and care nothing about him. 
The hardy warlike races, who furnish our best 



On the Path of Progress 177 

soldiers, utterly despise him. He is not, ordi- 
narily, a product of whom our rule should be 
proud." And yet he is the foremost representa- 
tive on the path of progress, and the man who 
aspires to take the reins from English hands. 
And he is what English education has made him: 
a poor thing — but their own! 

There are those who believe that if ever another 
rebellion breaks out in India it will be at the in- 
stigation of the educated classes, and that the 
danger lies in the mischievous and disloyal propa- 
ganda of the Bengali Baboos and the Mahratta 
Brahmins. Should these predictions be fulfilled, 
the Congress- Wallah will have justified himself, 
for he prints and preaches veiled sedition. The 
question remains whether England shall have 
justified her system, which has created a breed of 
demagogues in a land of fanatical racial hatreds, 
and a host of " young hopefuls," who, in learning 
to speak English in broken periods, have grown 
too proud to earn their own bread in their heredi- 
tary callings. 

It is a pleasant transition to the material pro- 
gress of India. The expanding revenue is the best 
index to its commercial as distinct from its rural 
prosperity. The country has been seamed with a 
network of railways, so that you can now travel 
from Cape Comorin to Peshawur, or from Karachi 
to Assam, without changing carriages; it has 
been opened out with roads and bridges that have 
brought the farthest jungles into communication 



1 7^ Indian Life 

with the busy centres of life. For eightpence you 
can despatch a telegram two thousand miles, and 
the halfpenny post has been an institution any 
time within these past thirty years. The prices 
current of European markets are known in India 
within an hour of their being shouted on the Ex- 
changes of the Continent, and people grumble if 
their correspondence with England takes a fort- 
night in its transit. The Government has re- 
claimed enormous tracts of waste land with the 
finest system of irrigation in the world, run canals 
through arid provinces, and battled with famine 
with an energy that has halved its horrors. The 
development of the industrial resources of the 
country has been equally remarkable. Bombay 
is a city of cotton mills, cotton presses, and gin- 
ning factories; the exports of grain from India 
exceed thirty million hundredweights; Calcutta 
sends out its shiploads of jute by the hundred from 
the magnificent mills erected to deal with the 
fibre. The tea, coffee, and indigo concerns num- 
ber considerably over a thousand; with tea more 
than half a million acres are planted, producing a 
hundred and eighty million pounds, and repre- 
senting twenty millions sterling invested, whilst 
coffee exports thirty-two million pounds, and in- 
digo from India is still held to be the best dye in 
the world. Coal is one of the most promising 
industries, and there are very rich gold mines in 
the Madras presidency. Western civilisation, en- 
ergy, and capital have developed all these and 



On the Path of Progress 179 

many other industries; have found markets for 
them, and, more important still, the means of 
getting the produce to the markets. Their estab- 
lishment has created a revolution in the industrial 
life of India, which, although it possessed all these 
resources, was never able to utilise them until 
British rule brought peace to pursue the arts of 
peace, and enterprise to push them forward. 

Nor can I pass over ' * fixity of exchange ' ' with- 
out mention. India is a land of silver currency, 
for you never see a golden coin in circulation 
there. So long as silver retained its old relative 
value to gold, and the rupee could be exchanged 
for a florin, which it approximated in weight, 
there were no fiscal difficulties in the way of com- 
merce. But as gold began to become ** appreci- 
ated," and the discoveries of mountains of silver 
deteriorated the value of that metal, the Indian 
rupee dropped in value, till you could only ex- 
change it for a shilling of English coinage, that 
was sustained by a gold reserve. The inherent 
speculations of commerce were doubled and tripled 
by the speculations of exchange, until Lord Elgin 
grasped the bull by the horns, and boldly fixed 
the rate at which the raw metal should be issued 
from the mints of India, irrespective of its intrinsic 
worth. By a stroke of the pen, a gold standard 
was established in a country of silver currency, 
and the rupee became a fixed instead of a fluctuat- 
ing token. Had India been left to its own re- 
sources in the economical crisis that was brought 



i8o Indian Life 

about by the depreciation of silver, her currency 
would have been halved in value as a purchasing 
power in countries where the standard is a gold 
one, and she must have been shut off from many 
of the Western luxuries she now enjoys, whose 
prices would have been increased thirty-three per 
cent, in her own coinage, as compared to what 
they are to-day. 

''Si monumentum requiris, circumspice ! *^ 
What the English have accomplished in India 
must ever be the best monument of their right to 
be there. There are those who have cried, 
** Perish India!" — the best way to bring about 
that result would be to withdraw from ruling it. 
For the edifice they have reared, and are rearing, 
needs the eye and the genius of the architect to 
continue its building. The foundation is the Un- 
changing East, but the stones are carried from the 
West. There is no builder in the Orient who can 
take charge of the plan, which is assuredly the 
boldest experiment that the English, the only suc- 
cessful Empire-builders in the world of to-day, 
have ever attempted. 




ANGLO-INDIAN LIFE 



i8i 



I 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE I.AND OF EXILE 

INDIA has often been called '"The Land of 
Regrets." It is the logical result of exile. 
The pervading sentiment in Anglo-Indian life is 
the consciousness of exile; the dearest word and 
thought, *' Home." And yet, curiously enough, 
there are few retired Anglo-Indians who are not 
often heard to wish themselves back in India! 

I have never been able to decide in my mind 
whether the charms of Anglo-Indian life outbal- 
anced its defects. It is such a mass of contradic- 
tions; of sunshine and gloom, of luxury and 
squalor, of comfort and discomfort. You recall 
one phase with delight to shrink at the reminis- 
cence of another. India is something more than 
a foreign country, it is a fantastic country, and it 
is almost impossible to come at a comparison be- 
tween the conditions there and those in England, 
because they differ as much as life at sea and on 
shore. 

People in England have a habit of beginning 
all conversations with a reference to the weather; 
this can hardly be avoided when you come to talk 
183 



1 84 Indian Life 

of India, for the climatic conditions dominate life 
there, and make it for the greater part of the year 
an indoor one. Take a census of the European 
population any time between ten and four, from 
March to September, and you shall find it in- 
doors. This, of course, is a very stale piece of in- 
formation, and you may retort that all oJBBce-men 
and most women in England suffer the same con- 
finement. True, but from a very different neces- 
sity, and under very different conditions. There 
are times on a hot summer's day when indoors 
becomes oppressive even in England : it is always 
oppressive in India. At seasons it is overpower- 
ingly so, as when you live for two or three months 
at a stretch in a bath of perspiration, and wonder 
whether you will ever know what it is to be cool 
again. It debilitates and depresses; the punkah 
that sways above you with its drowsy rise and 
fall, and keeps you imprisoned to a square of the 
carpet, is either an irritant or a soporific; the 
darkened room affects you with the sadness of a 
perpetual twilight. Life resolves itself into a 
negative state, and inanition supervenes on 
apathy. There are six hundred minutes in some 
Indian hours, I am sure, and not one of them 
bearable. 

The new arrival, in his fever of Saxon energy 
and impatience, puts on a hat (that is in itself a 
handicap on ordinary comfort) and makes a 
plunge into the roasting sunshine. If under such 
conditions you can train your mind to think of 




A GROUP OF MAHOMEDANS 



The Land of Exile 185 

anything so delicious as an icy blast, it may be 
said that the east wind is tempered to the shorn 
lamb; for it is undoubtedly the case that the 
"Griffin" — who corresponds to the ''New Chum" 
of the Colonies — feels or fears the heat much less 
than the presumably hardened old stager. I can- 
not explain this, but it is notorious, and the old 
Anglo-Indian who returns to England will often 
find its summer temperature more oppressive than 
a man who has never experienced a tropical 
one. 

But when you have dared the sun, and are once 
out of doors in India, what do you gain by it ? I 
vow the only thing more physically disagreeable 
than indoors is out of doors, and you must be very 
much in a hurry to see the country to stick to the 
exchange. There is nothing to recommend it, 
and your last state is worse than your first. There 
are only heat, glare, dust, thirst, perspiration, flies, 
and a conviction that you are not in your proper 
element; and that is what makes the imprison- 
ment of indoor life in India so hard to suffer — 
there is absolutely no refuge from it. 

Except for the members of the commercial com- 
munity, India is a land of locomotion and un- 
settled habitation. Two or three years in any 
one *' station," as towns are called, is the utmost 
that can be anticipated. No man lays himself 
out for a long residence any where, and a perma- 
nent home is an unknown quantity to the ma- 
jority of Anglo-Indians, whose life is practically 



1 86 Indian Life 

passed in a succession of furnished apartments. 
Far more often than not his furniture is hired, 
and his bungalow rented on a monthly tenancy, 
so that he may always be ready to strike his tents 
and shift station at the shortest notice. A man 
deems himself lucky who is permitted to pass four 
undisturbed years in one district. 

It must not be presumed from my reference to 
furnished apartments that there are such con- 
veniences in the East, except in the sense that 
house and furniture are both rented. In city life, 
a few men reside in hotels, which are cheaper in 
India than anywhere I know of in the world, the 
charge being seven to eight shillings a day, and 
the comfort in ratio to the charge. In the finest 
hotel in Bombay you will be supplied with only 
one knife, fork, and spoon, which will be taken 
away and cleaned after every course! In Calcutta 
there are a great number of boarding-houses, but 
the average Englishman, be he married or single, 
has to keep up his own house and establishment. 
With bachelors, ** chumming" is very common, 
where there is any one to chum with, but, taken 
on the whole, life is solitary and ungregarious. 

L^ocomotion is rendered comparatively easy by 
the railways, but the distances that have to be 
traversed are enormous. I remember once being 
a week in trains travelling from Calicut to I^ahore, 
and two to three days is quite an ordinary journey. 
For shorter distances, every one who can manage 
it travels by night. No European travels third- 



The Land of Exile 187 

class, and as many as can first, the charge for which 
is a fraction over a penny a mile. There are 
in every train carriages set aside for ladies, an 
arrangement which is very necessary when the 
railway carriage practically becomes a place of 
residence for two or three days. Every carriage is 
a saloon or half- saloon, with a bathroom and lava- 
tory attached, and the seats are so constructed that 
the backs turn up and form couches or bunks. It 
is the universal practice in India to carry your bed- 
ding about with you; in fact, no one ever leaves 
home for a single night without his proper com- 
plement of quilts, sheets, and pillows, so that the 
matter of bed-clothes gives no trouble. Male 
passengers habitually undress and tumble into 
pyjamas^ and ladies adopt the negligi of a dress- 
ing-gown. Meals are provided at "Refreshment- 
room stations " at stated intervals on the line, and, 
being ordered in advance by the guard, are always 
ready when the train draws up; the charges vary 
from two to three shillings for breakfast, tiffin (the 
Anglo-Indian name for luncheon), and dinner. 
In the hot weather, the guard always carries ice 
and soda-water in his van, and these can be pur- 
chased at any stopping station en route. A din- 
ing-car is unknown in India, where, judging by 
the length of stoppages at insignificant stations, 
saving time is of little consideration. The speed 
of the trains varies from sixteen to twenty-five 
miles an hour, with the exception of a few mail 
trains, which may attain thirty. This is quite 



1 88 Indian Life 

in accord with the sentiment of the Kast, where 
hurry is against the etiquette of native good 
manners. 

A great deal of travelling in India has to be ac- 
complished by horse transit, and a tonga^ which 
is a sort of two-horsed dog-cart, is the commonest 
vehicle in use, and ambles along at the rate of six 
miles an hour. After this comes the ddk-gharrie, 
which runs on four wheels. In this you may 
bridge over the seats, spread your bedding out, 
and take your ease. Failing these methods of 
crossing country there is the dhoolie-ddk, or pa- 
lanquin, which still survives in some of the out- 
of-the-way places. Here you are carried in a 
recumbent position in a closed-in litter on the 
shoulders of four men, with a couple to relieve, at 
a stereotyped pace of three miles an hour, and in a 
cloud of dust churned up by their shuffling feet. 
The experienced dhoolie-ddk traveller never allows 
his dhoolie to be set on the ground, whereby he 
avoids exasperating detentions at the stages 
where the bearers are changed. In these methods 
of travelling you put up at ddk-bungalows, or 
Government hostelries, which are erected all 
along the main Indian roads. They are comfort- 
less places as a rule, in charge of a cook who gen- 
erally catches and kills a fowl for you when you 
arrive, and serves it up within twenty minutes. 
The ddk-bungalow is one of the trials of Anglo- 
Indian life, and has probably had more jokes 
fathered upon it than English seaside lodging 



The Land of Exile 189 

houses; but when you are in one, the joke is not 
appreciable. 

Such are the means by which the Moffussil^ 
** up-country," or provincial Anglo-Indian will 
reach his station or district, and unless he is going 
to Bombay or Calcutta, which are practically the 
two entrance doors of the Empire, with Madras 
for a back door, his first experience of Anglo- In- 
dian life will be of travel; and the land journey 
will often prove much more trying than the sea- 
voyage. India is, as I have called it, a I^and of 
lyocomotion. 

Outside the principal cities and towns of India, 
shopping is impossible. This does not refer to 
household shopping, which is always left to the 
servants, for, wherever you are, it is beneath your 
dignity to have personal transactions with your 
butcher, baker, grocer, or milkman. But Euro- 
pean luxuries, which include wines and tinned 
provisions, you may select yourself without any 
loss of caste. India luxuriates in hermetically 
sealed stores: tinned salmon and lobster, tinned 
bacon and cheese, tinned soups and sausages, 
tinned asparagus and fruit, tinned jam and potted 
meats — good heavens! what is there that is not 
tinned ? These are the dainties of Anglo-Indian 
daily life, the delicacies of the dinner-party. '* I 
suppose," the *' country-bred " belle is reported to 
have said, "the Queen of England has tinned tid- 
bits at every meal! " They correspond with the 
truffles and turtle-soup of English banquets. I 



190 Indian Life 

remember a very worthy Scotchman who used to 
allow himself a tinned Finnan haddock every Sun- 
day for breakfast; he said it was an extravagance, 
but it reminded him of Scotland! I have myself 
found tinned lobster in the solitudes of the Hima- 
layas reminiscent of the Isle of Sark, where I 
spent the most delightful holiday of my life. 
Taste is as great a refresher of memory as smell. 

In small up-country stations there are generally 
one or two "Europe shops," kept more often than 
not by Parsees, where one can purchase the most 
miscellaneous assortment of articles, ranging from 
patent medicines and Scotch whisky to composite 
candles and Christmas cards. But for other 
tradesmen, such as the tailor, bootmaker, draper, 
and barber, you send for them to attend you. 
Your tailor, indeed, you often keep on the pre- 
mises, for the Indian derzie, or knight of the 
needle, squats in the verandah, and can adapt his 
art to either sex, turning out hot- weather suits of 
white drill, or tea-gowns, or summer frocks with a 
sort of ambidexterity. The hat is another affair; 
in the land of the turban you will do well not to 
rely on the vernacular hatter. It is well to obtain 
your topee from a reliable source, for the native- 
made head-gear of the Moffussil, a monstrous 
*' mushroom " made out of pith an inch in thick- 
ness, is the sort of thing to provide novelty and 
amusement in a pantomime. Your washerman 
is your private property, and resides on the pre- 
mises; if you are a bachelor, you pay him four or 



The Land of Exile 191 

five shillings a month, and he does all your wash- 
ing; even if it runs to seven suits of white drill 
clothes and fourteen shirts a week there is no 
extra charge. The Anglo-Indian changes his 
linen very frequently, and when he returns to 
Kngland the first thing he curses is the laundry 
bill. 

Beyond the necessaries of life, whatever you 
want you must send for by post. There is a sys- 
tem in India called the ''Value Payable Post," or 
briefly ''V.P.P.," by which the value of the 
parcel delivered is at time of delivery recovered 
from the purchaser, who must pay before he gets 
his goods. This has been a great boon to the 
shopkeepers of the country, where, until its in- 
stitution, credit was universal, and not always 
immaculate. All petty shopping is done by 
V.P.P. ; it is the recognised arrangement, and 
seldom abused except where the unkind cut is 
practised of sending an old unpaid bill, receipted, 
through its medium. The Kuropean tradesmen 
of the cities make this method of shopping easy 
by distributing the most elaborate illustrated cat- 
alogues and price-lists, many of them in bulk 
equal to the Field. The nuisance of circulars is 
greater in Anglo- India than in England. 

One of the luxuries of England is the daily 
morning paper to be purchased everywhere and 
in endless variety. Except on the line of rail in 
India, you cannot buy a paper, and then only for 
fourpence in the majority of cases, though a penny 



192 Indian Life 

paper exists in Calcutta. The Pioneer, or English- 
man, or Times of India is always received by post, 
and imparts a peculiar sense of welcome to the man 
in scarlet, the distinctive uniform of the Indian 
postman. The craving for home news is very 
marked, and the London cablegrams are the first 
things glanced at or inquired about. They not un- 
frequently constitute the one excitement of the In- 
dian day. After them, the advertisement columns 
attract as much attention as any other, for here 
you shall glean much personal information that is 
vastly interesting. You do your shopping from 
them as a matter of course, but more edifying 
than this is to learn who is selling-off and going 
home. For the first thing an Anglo-Indian does 
who premeditates a trip to England is to advertise 
his household goods in the Press. If you want to 
buy a piano, horse, dog, tent, dinner service, or 
anything substantial in value, your first course is 
to scan the advertisement columns of your paper, 
wherein from March to June, the season when 
every one desires to leave India, you can rely on 
a plethora of bargains offered to you; but prices 
go up from October to December, when all who 
are on leave, and can fix their own time, return 
to the country, and are **on the buy." 

The Indian daily paper is far more to the 
Anglo-Indian than you would suppose; it is his 
living link with England, and its meagre cable- 
grams — for they are miserly meagre — bring de- 
light to thousands of exiles. That feeling of being 



The Land of Exile 193 

" in touch with home " cannot be understood by 
any one who has not left it. There are men 
parted from those they hold most dear who keep 
account of the approximate speed of the various 
mail steamers, and will tell you at a moment's 
notice whether the week's mail may be expected 
a day earlier or a day later than the average, or 
on the contract date. And they eagerly trace its 
course from Brindisi to Port Said, from Port Said 
to Aden, from Aden to Bombay, and are all agog 
to know whether a special train has been put on to 
expediate the bags to their part of India. That 
is where the sense of exile comes in, — the looking 
and longing for the English mail. 

Except in the Hills, which are elevated sana- 
toriums on the slopes of the Himalayas or other 
mountain ranges, and which correspond to Eng- 
lish holiday resorts, there is not much walking 
done in India. First of all the act of walking is 
derogatory, and no native gentleman ever travels 
on "Shanks' mare." When a viceroy indulged 
in a walking tour in the Himalayas the natives 
were scandalised. Then, again, the majority of 
Europeans keep at least one horse and trap. You 
may almost call it a necessity for the European 
character. In the commercial centres an " office 
carriage " is often kept for the clerks of the mer- 
cantile houses, or at least a palanquin. At those 
times when the English would consider walking 
a pastime the Anglo-Indian rides or drives; a 
gentle stroll in the cool of the evening is the limit 



194 Indian Life 

of his exertions, except when he is out shooting. 
Of course, climate has a good deal to do with this 
lassitude, not to say laziness; but when people 
can afford horse-flesh, it is extraordinary how soon 
they learn to become ''carriage-folk," who had 
never kept a carriage in Kngland did they live 
there for a century. The cost of keeping a horse 
is comparatively small, though each horse has a 
groom and grass-cutter attached to it; you may 
put it down at about fifteen-pence a day, and the 
purchase of a hack at twenty pounds, though a 
* ' country-bred ' ' can be picked up much cheaper. 
Drinking is far more prevalent in Anglo-India 
than in England. Up-country, to omit offering 
a " peg," which almost invariably assumes the 
form of a whisky and soda, is a great lapse from 
propriety and decency. But the Indian ''peg," 
albeit copious, is fairly innocuous, a small modi- 
cum of spirit being usually drowned in a pint of 
aerated water. Many men fight shy of beer on 
account of liver; light wines are coming more into 
favour; but brandy, once the typical Anglo-Indian 
drink, is unknown. Of course, the thirst is ab- 
normal, and a long drink before midday probably 
the custom. But by eleven o'clock, when the sun 
is supposed to come over the fore-arm, the Anglo- 
Indian has been up for five or six hours, and for 
my part I always considered that the middle of 
the working-day, and a legitimate hour to refresh. 
The really insidious time for " pegging " is in the 
cool hours of the evening after sunset, and before 



The Land of Exile 195 

dinner, when people meet for company and too 
often for conviviality. But, taking him for all in 
all, the Anglo-Indian has made a greater stride 
towards sobriety in the last thirty years than Eng- 
land did in the nineteenth century, which is say- 
ing a good deal. Without calling him temperate, 
I should decidedly call him a sufficiently sober 
soul, considering the aggravating conditions of 
thirst under which he lives. 

The food in India, whilst far inferior in the raw 
material to that of England, is rendered much 
more tasty by the excellence of the cooking. No 
one ever sits down to a dinner of less than four 
courses, and the native chef is peculiarly skilful at 
entries, or ''side dishes," as they are called. The 
country itself provides some excellent appetisers, 
and pillaos, ketcheries, and curries will tempt the 
most jaded palate when English cooking would 
nauseate it. For tiffin in the hottest weather 
there is nothing like currie. Joints are at a dis- 
count in a country where all the meat is bad, and 
people who turn up their noses at Australian mut- 
ton would find it convenient to be born snub-nosed 
for a residence in the East. Chicken is the stand- 
ard dish of India, and beef the least consumed. 
Eggs enter very largely into the dietary, but they 
are small, scarce bigger than bantams'; and, in 
the season, game can be shot or purchased almost 
everywhere. 

There is no difficulty in making acquaintances 
in India, for the first call is the prerogative of the 



196 Indian Life 

last arrival. Kvery Anglo- Indian's bungalow 
stands in its own garden, and at the gate hangs 
suspended a board with his name painted on it. 
Kach station is a directory in itself, and all the 
new-comer requires is a sheaf of visiting-cards. 
Having delivered these he enters society, and 
his subsequent experience depends upon himself. 
Hospitality, though behind the standard of the 
pre-Suez-Canal days, is still a shining virtue of 
the Anglo-Indian, and a stranger who is able to 
make himself agreeable is never a stranger long. 
His chief difficulty will be to avoid the cliques into 
which society in the Kast habitually falls; this is 
perhaps a natural result in a community where 
every one knows every one, and a splitting up 
into groups of affinities is the corollary, — and not 
only knows every one else, but his income, his 
prospects, and his particular social status in a 
select population governed by the strictest laws of 
precedence. There have been more quarrels over 
precedence in Anglo- India than over any other 
cause; it is regulated by a table edited and issued 
by Government, which is, in effi£ct, the charter of 
Anglo-Indian society. Ladies are pedantically 
jealous, and woe betide the unhappy hostess who 
makes some quite unintentional error in the order 
in which she sends her guests in to dinner. It 
often leads to a row royal. When it becomes very 
acute, some one pitches the Table of Precedence at 
the parties, as Moses did the Tables of the I^aw, 
and that settles it. 



The Land of Exile 197 

And talking of Anglo-Indian ladies, their po- 
sition in the East is not what it was. The fatal 
Canal supplied them in such legions that the dif- 
ficulty of the modern hostess is to get dancing 
men, not spinsters. In the ** good old days," a 
ball was often put off when it was known that an 
unmarried girl or two — "spins," as they are called 
in Anglo-Indian phrase — were ddkmg up to the 
station, consequent on the arrival of a ship from 
England; nowadays it is deferred until a polo 
match of gymkhana (a gathering for sports) is 
due, to bring the men into headquarters. When 
I went out to India in 1871, there were nine 
** spins " in a passenger-list of forty, and all were 
married within the year; returning in 1896 in a 
P. and O. mail steamer, there were more blighted 
ambitions on board than I counted. The modern 
Anglo-Indian is prone to marriage, but he goes 
home to get him a wife in the majority of cases. 
And if there is one thing he avoids, it is the 
*' country-bred." 

" Country" is a peculiar adjective in Anglo- 
Indianism that at once diminishes the value of 
anything. It is a sneer and a condemnation. A 
* * country-bred ' ' individual is at once stigmatised 
by the appellation. *' Country-made" goods are 
a synonym for inferiority. On the other hand, 
anything *' English " or '' imported " at once ac- 
quires a special value, and an imported dog, iron 
bedstead, carpet, or article of furniture stamps the 
owner as a man of taste and means, and sheds 



igS Indian Life j 

dignity over him. ' ' What is she ? " a man asks, 
nodding towards a prettj^ brunette in a ballroom. 
"Oh, only a C. B." That suffices. But you 
must know your audience in using the initials. 
There is a story told of a gentleman who was ex- 
tolling the merits of a certain handsome young 
official, already a Companion of the Bath, to a 
lady of the country, and observed he was a "C. B." 
" What is that? " she inquired, half daring, half 
doubting, for she could not believe the individual 
in question was not ' * imported. " ' ' A Companion 
of the Bath," came the explanation. ** Oh, you 
must not speak to me like that! " was the protest 
of the co}^ creature. 




CHAPTER XIV 



ANGIyO-INDlAN CASTAS 



YOU can divide Anglo-Indian society into 
castes as precisely as you can the Hindus. 
The Civil Service, or administrative class, repre- 
sents the Brahmins, with their privileges, their 
power, and their precedence of all others. In the 
military, you have an exact counterpart of the 
warrior caste, and, in its relation to the Brahmins, 
identical. The mercantile element represents the 
trading castes, and the * ' British workman ' ' on 
railways and in mills, shops, and ofi&ces is a 
Vaishya, or of the labouring caste; whilst to com- 
plete the parallel, the Eurasian, or half-caste, is 
the pariah of Anglo-Indian society. Uncon- 
sciously, but exactly, these groups represent 
those in the Hindu scale in their opinions of 
themselves and their relations to one another. 

The English Brahmins are divided into as many 
sections as their native prototypes. First comes 
the ''\.CS.-Wallah;' or Indian Covenanted 
Civilian, who is the salt of the earth, a Benares 
Brahmin, so to speak, with the umbrella of im- 
portance always over him. There are about a 
199 



200 Indian Life ^ 

thousand civilians entitled to put those magic in- 
itials, which stand for '* Indian Civil Service," 
after their names; all the other civilians are ** Un- 
covenanted Civilians," which is quite another 
pair of shoes. But, be they covenanted or uncov- 
enanted, they monopolise all the best-buttered 
pieces of bread in the Indian Empire. 

The Indian Civil Service is the highest paid of 
any in the world, and offers more plums of ap- 
pointment, with a salary always munificent, a 
pension of a thousand a year after twenty-one 
years' service, and, in the event of death, four 
hundred a year to the widow and a hundred and 
fifty to each of his daughters. From the ranks of 
this privileged class, a man may rise to be the 
Lieutenant of a Province as large as the United 
Kingdom, to several lesser spheres of ruling 
power and dignity, may become a State Secretary, 
a member of Council, or adorn several other posts, 
the emoluments of which vary from three to seven 
thousand pounds a year. And throughout his 
career, he is always favoured of what Mr. Kipling 
has called the ''little tin gods," and carries his 
chin at a higher cock than any one else in Anglo- 
India. 

The Covenanted Civilian has his weaknesses; 
for instance, he always inscribes the initials I.C.S. 
on his visiting-cards after his name, and on the 
board at the gate of his garden. This is to inform 
the world that he belongs to that higher Brahmin- 
ism which looks coldly down on the rest. He is 



Anglo-Indian Castes 201 

the aristocrat of a community which does not 
number more than one hundred and fifty thousand 
Britons, and represents the exclusiveness of the 
upper ten thousand in England. He is charged 
by his less fortunate fellow-creatures with being 
conceited and purse-proud; but this is probably 
due to jealousy in most instances. There is a 
covenanted civilian at the head of every district in 
India, who is a little king in his way, and rules 
society. He is expected to entertain and lead the 
fashion, and much depends upon the character of 
the individual and his wife. The service is re- 
cruited by competitive examination open to all, 
and brains, or to speak more correctly, cramming, 
wins its way to the front. Gentle birth is no 
longer an essential for employ in the service of 
the Indian Government, and you may, and some- 
times do, find a tradesman's son in the ranks of 
the select service. In the old days of John Com- 
pany, when appointments were given to nominees 
of the directors, the latter were sponsors for the 
social status of their candidate; but that is all 
changed under the present system, and perhaps 
not for the better. 

Notwithstanding, and taking it all round, the 
administrators of the Indian Civil Service are 
probably as good as any in the Empire, and the 
foibles they display are no greater than you will 
find in England amongst members of Parliament 
and civic magnates. The civilian moults his 
feathers when he gets west of the Suez Canal, and 



202 Indian Life 

sometimes becomes a very sparrow. I have sel- 
dom experienced such a shock as that of meeting 
on the top of a penny 'bus a " Commissioner," 
who had been the virtual ruler of four of the 
largest districts in Upper India, and who, when I 
had last seen him, was driving in a feudatory 
rajah's carriage, escorted by sowars, and through 
a city the population of which was in a state of 
ground-level prostration. '* lyook on this picture 
and on that," was my mental reflection, as I re- 
membered the pomp and circumstance of his 
* ' receptions ' ' in the Bast, when he never conde- 
scended to advance from a particular square of 
the carpet to greet his guests. But I cannot 
candidly say he was typical of any but a small 
class amongst his fellows who carry the rights of 
the divinity that doth hedge them to an absurd 
excess at times. 

The lesser civilians in India, — the engineer, the 
doctor, the superintendent of police, and so forth 
— have each a dignity above the common, which 
is conferred by being in service under Govern- 
ment. This is, perhaps, natural in a country 
where nearly all the members of society, outside 
a few large cities, are in " the service," and their 
status laid down in those Tables of Precedence I 
have quoted, which take no account whatever of 
the non-official. How should it, since they are 
not concerned with him ? But for him the fact re- 
mains, that in going to India to fulfil his destiny, 
and help to develop the land, he surrenders all 



Anglo-Indian Castes 203 

claims to his own proper social rank in a bureau- 
cracy that has no admittance for ' * outsiders. ' ' 

The militar)'^ caste comes next in the Anglo- 
Indian social scale, a position it does not alto- 
gether appreciate. Between civilians and military 
there has been an antipathy from the beginning, 
is now, and ever will continue to be. Kven in 
India the soldier is a poor man, and few of the 
loaves and fishes fall to his share. It is difiicult 
for him on his ' ' hundreds ' ' to compete with the 
civilian, whose income is reckoned by thousands, 
and the return of hospitality is a heavy tax on 
him. If it were not for the military mess system, 
the problem would be harder, for Anglo- Indian 
society is prodigal of entertainment. As it is, 
mess entertainments are proverbially the best of 
all, and there is no place for enjoying life so gaily 
and brightly as a military cantonment in the cold 
weather. And where j^ou find the soldier there 
is the best polo, the best cricket, the best racing, 
the best gymkhanas^ the best of every form of 
sport and pastime. Moreover, there is an absence 
of stiffness in military entertainments that con- 
trasts pleasantly with the more elaborate profusion 
but rather * ' slow ' ' hospitality of the civilian. 

As I have said, there is no love lost, as classes, 
between the civil and military folk. They are 
different castes, and they keep to their own as 
distinctly as do the Brahmins and rajpoots. Be- 
tween the individual members there is often a 
keen jealousy. The precedence nearly always 



204 Indian Life 

belongs to the civilian, who, if he is head of the 
district, is the senior of the officer commanding. 
Not unfrequently tiflfs occur amongst the exalted, 
and then society at once divides itself, and you 
have your civil and your military cliques, which 
are as oil and vinegar. Perhaps, on the whole, 
the soldier has the best of it, because his society 
is larger, and leaves him more independent, whilst 
the civilian has only half a dozen of his caste to 
gather round him. 

There is a queer compound to be found in some 
of the provinces of India, known as the military 
civilian. He is a soldier in what is called '* civil 
employ," and whilst retaining his military rank, 
is to all intents and purposes, except pay, and 
the privilege of the initials, an Indian civilian. 
There are military revenue officers, military magis- 
trates, and even military judges, whose functions 
are purely peaceful. I have seen a district judge, 
who held the rank of a major in the army, trying 
a case with a cheroot in his mouth, and giving 
ear to the subtlest arguments of counsel; and a 
colonel addressing himself to the task of collecting 
revenue with nothing more threatening than a 
pen in his hand. One I remember whose boast it 
was that he had not put on a uniform for twenty 
years. The military civilian inclines to the man- 
ners and customs of the Brahmin rather than to 
those of the warrior caste, and in his habitual 
mufti seems to have sloughed off the military 
habit, and become a man of peace and plenty. 



Anglo-Indian Castes 205 

Descending from the Brahmin and warrior 
castes in Anglo- Indian society, it is a consider- 
able step down to the trading caste. Into this 
classification fall merchants, planters, mission- 
aries, manufacturers, barristers, and all those call- 
ings where the labour is not with the hands, but 
excluding shopkeepers, who are a caste to them- 
selves. The custom of the East places these 
non-officials in the nondescript position of having 
no recognised social status by law prescribed. 
India is a land despotically governed, and the 
laws that govern its society are equally despotic. 
Nothing can be more humiliating than the status 
of the isolated non-official in an up-country 
station, where all the European community is 
composed of civilians or military officers. In the 
large mercantile centres, like Calcutta and Bom- 
bay, the non-official has his own society, and 
keeps to it; so, also, in the planting centres. But 
between these classes and the official ones there is 
decidedly a gulf fixed, and the civiUan especially 
looks down on the trader who, for his part, eyes 
the official with something akin to amused con- 
tempt when exposed to his superciliousness. 

But where the non-official is otherwise situated, 
he is very helpless. There is no such thing as 
public opinion in India outside the metropolitan 
cities, and the non-official has no voice in any 
matter. The Press of India does not represent 
public opinion, but the views of Government; its 
chief subscribers are Government officials, and it 



2o6 Indian Life 

is dependent on the powers that be for news, not 
to mention fat contracts for advertising and print- 
ing. The non- official is without a vote, without 
representation, without privileges, and without 
rights, even though he be a free-born Knglishman. 
He sacrifices all those when he enters on an East- 
ern career. In out-of-the-way places, he feels al- 
most as if he were living on sufferance, and a 
man may be employing hundreds of labourers in 
a mill, or opening up thousands of acres of land 
that was waste, or introducing an industry that 
brings plenty to an impoverished district, and yet 
find himself considered socially of less account 
than the last young prig of an ofiicial out from 
Colville Gardens. 

This social status is a little hard on the men 
who are the backbone of the prosperity of the 
country. The merchant, the manufacturer, and 
the planter are the people who have developed 
India, and brought Anglo-Saxon energy, not to 
mention capital, to work on its resources. The 
ofiicial may collect the revenue, but without the 
non-ofl5cial, it would not have been one half of 
what it is at the present day. Moreover, there is 
a great jealousy of the non- official when he suc- 
ceeds, and especially of that independence which 
the members of a bureaucratical form of govern- 
ment dare not display. 

But harder than the lot of the English non- 
official gentleman in India is that of the Anglo- 
Saxon Sudra^ as I may call the working-man. 



Anglo-Indian Castes 207 

He is an individual who labours with his hands in 
a country where all manual labour is far more de- 
rogatory than in Kngland. You may say that no 
one need be ashamed of honest work, but where 
the white skin carries a racial superiority with it, 
the spectacle of one of the ruling race toiling with 
his hands before the natives is not edifying. It is 
necessary, but it is anomalous. When one boards 
the homeward-bound steamer there is always a 
sense of the unfit in being waited upon by the 
English stewards. This is work you are accus- 
tomed to associate with native menials only, and 
it takes you some time to pick up again those 
little, amenities in accepting service which you 
have never vouchsafed your bearer or kitmudghar. 
Tommy Atkins is redeemed by his uniform, 
which carries honour and iclat with it, but the 
grimy ganger on the railway, the European con- 
stable in the larger cities, and, worst of all, the 
English coachman employed by some of the 
wealthier natives, and the ladies' -maids whom 
certain ladies think it fashionable to keep, jar 
mightily against sentiment in a land where all 
manual and menial service is done by natives. 
At the same time, I am bound to admit that the 
British working-man is well able to "keep his end 
up," and even though he be a ** poor white " in a 
population where most whites are tolerably well off, 
he asserts the birthright of his white skin not with- 
out energy. But I must say for my own part that, 
for choice, I should prefer the equal conditions 



2o8 Indian Life 

of Kngland at a lower wage to the social surrender 
every one must yield who takes pick and shovel 
in hand in the East. You cannot get away from 
caste in India, and that is against caste. 

The pariah, or outcaste of Anglo-Indian society 
is found in the Eurasian, descended from a white 
father and a native mother, and the intermarriage 
of their offspring. There are as many Eurasians 
in India as there are pure whites, and they carry 
all shades of complexion, from one so fair that you 
cannot distinguish it from a European's to shades 
considerably darker than manj^ of the native races. 

In America, a half-caste who has less than half 
white blood in his veins is described as a quadroon 
or octoroon; the Anglo-Indian system is even 
more definite. The assessment follows the coin- 
age. Thus the phrase '' He is eight, six, four, or 
two annas in the rupee ' ' (as the case may be) de- 
scribes the Eurasian with analytical accuracy. 
** Eight annas," or half a rupee, designates the 
actual half caste; "four annas" those of one 
white and one half-caste parent, and six and two 
annas the intermediate degrees. It is all calcu- 
lated to a nicety by this mathematical method. 
The prejudice against black blood is insuperable, 
and the merest " touch of the tar-brush " is suf- 
ficient to create a stigma. The Eurasian speaks 
with a peculiar accent, called chi-chi, which is con- 
sidered very objectionable; he makes his final 
'*y's" into **e's," and is in difficulty with his 
** th's." For instance, he would render "D'Arcy 



Anglo-Indian Castes 209 

Macarthy come to the city," '' Darcee Macartee 
com to dee citee." The Anglo-Indian ear is very 
sharp to recognise chi-chi bdt. 

The Eurasian occupies an unenviable position. 
He is too proud to mix with the natives, who 
will, indeed, have none of him, and the European 
shuns him. He is a sort of social neutral stratum, 
regarded as foreign and looked upon with suspicion 
by the brown race, and looked down on with con- 
tempt by the white. Popularly supposed to inherit 
all the vices and none of the virtues of his parents, 
there is little ever said in his favour. I fear you 
cannot call the Eurasian trustworthy or truthful 
as a class, though of course there are many hon- 
ourable exceptions. Certain it is he seldom rises 
to high employ, and is chiefly engaged in clerkly 
duties, for he has an unconquerable aversion to 
physical work or energy of any sort. The Eura- 
sian society is one apart and unique, and its eti- 
quette and manners are often a fine burlesque on 
those of the white race, with which its members 
are proud to claim connection. Their womenfolk 
affect gaudy colours, and a Eurasian ball will dis- 
play as many rainbow tints as a mulatto one. 
Some of the Eurasian girls are very beautiful 
when young, and not a few Europeans have suc- 
cumbed to their charms, and married them; but 
such alliances are regarded with extreme disfavour 
when they occur among the higher grades of 
oflScial life. As for the lower-class Eurasian 

men, it would be difficult to tell them from natives 
14 



2IO Indian Life 

except for their European costume, and the fact 
that they do not shave their heads and do part 
their hair. The Portuguese have left behind a 
monument of their Indian dominion in a very 
numerous race of half-breeds, who hail from Goa. 
They enter largely into domestic service, and in 
Bombay all the best cooks and w^aiters are of 
Portuguese extraction. Nor will you find, in the 
whole of India, any better servants than these, 
with their white Kton jacket, collar and shirt, and 
bare feet. In this latter point they have adopted 
the custom of the natives without discarding that 
of the European, and the Goa boy comes into 
your presence without hat or shoes. 

Of all the minor problems in India, "What 
shall we do with the Eurasians ? " is perhaps the 
most difficult. They have just cause for com- 
plaint in the treatment they receive from the 
European, whose attitude towards them is similar 
to that of the native towards the outcaste. And 
yet the European race is responsible for these de- 
spised folk, and they cling to their connection 
with the ruling class with a pride and persistency 
that is almost pathetic. 

I have not mentioned the ''loafer," which is 
the Anglo-Indian word for the European beggar. 
He exists. Volubility is his forte, and he is al- 
ways en route to a distant district to take up an 
appointment. He generally keeps to the cities, 
but sometimes he " tours the provinces."' He is 
a creditor on your bounty, and I do not know any 



Anglo-Indian Castes 211 

man more difficult to get rid of. It is a sorry- 
spectacle to see him tramping the highway, but 
he is a dangerous individual to give money to, for 
it is nearly always sure to go at the next native 
dram-shop. In ninety-nine cases out of a hun- 
dred, drink has brought him to his miserable con- 
dition. And yet he belongs to the ruling race, 
and as he tramps the road you will find every 
native giving him the right of it! 

For it is the custom of the country for the black 
to bow before the white, and this continual sur- 
render has its effect upon the dominant race. It 
is not a wholesome atmosphere for it. The aris- 
tocracy of colour has its evils; it engenders a false 
pride, a sense of superiority, an inflatedness of 
self, which is, perhaps, the weakest point in the 
Anglo-Indian's character. It does the average 
Anglo-Indian good to go to a colony, and live in 
a state of equality for a time; for he gets a little 
too overbearing in India, surrounded as he is by 
servility and constant fawning. The black back- 
ground brings the white skin into extreme relief; 
the effect is too dazzling — on the white. Nothing 
does him more good than to go home to England, 
and be kept waiting by the young lady attendant 
at a post-office for a penny stamp, while she fin- 
ishes her flirtation with the Sudra — or, as I should 
say, the shop assistant from next door! 



CHAPTER XV 

BUNGAI^OW I.IFE; 

THK Anglo- Indian's bungalow is as different 
from an Knglisli house in its external ap- 
pearance and internal arrangement as is a temple 
from a church. It is always a detached building 
standing in ground of its own, which is called the 
"compound," single-storied, rambling, and flat- 
roofed. The doors are ill-fitting and clumsy, the 
windows small and often not made to be opened, 
and a '' sash " window is unknown. The walls 
are whitewashed or distempered, and the floors are 
of cement. Every room has direct access to a 
verandah, and all enter one into another, for there 
are no passages. Kach bedroom has its own bath 
and retiring room, there being no drains in India. 
A room with a single door in it is unknown; all 
have two, and many three, four, and even six, 
and those leading into the verandahs are generally 
glazed, which saves windows. Very few bunga- 
lows have halls, the verandah in the front of the 
house doing duty for such. Cellarage does not 
exist, and naturally there are no fireplaces, save 
in those districts in the north of India where the 

212 



Bungalow Life 213 

nights are chilly in the * * cold weather, ' ' which is 
the Indian name for winter. Except in the capi- 
tal cities, water and gas are conspicuous by their 
absence, and you may call at every house between 
Cape Comorin and Cashmere without finding a 
bell to pull. 

The kitchen is a detached building erected as 
far away as possible from the bungalow. The 
only connection with your commissariat allowed 
in the dwelling is the storeroom, invariably 
known in India as the ** godown" ; and the sole 
domestic duty of the diligent Anglo-Indian house- 
wife is to ** do her godown " every morning. The 
cook comes with an assortment of plates and pots, 
makes his suggestions for the menus of the day's 
meals, and proceeds to help himself to the exact 
amount of ingredients necessary for them. This 
is a check upon pilfering, for all Indian servants 
feed themselves, and at your expense if they can. 
Meat in its uncooked state is never kept in the 
house, and only brought there for casual inspec- 
tion; and on the fowl that enters so largely into 
Anglo-Indian dietary you cast a discriminating 
eye as it is being chevied round the compound 
preliminary to slaughter. In the kitchen, the 
cooking arrangements are primitive. The 
* ' range ' ' consists of half a dozen small open fire- 
places, each about eight inches square, grouped 
in a nest on the floor, or on raised masonry, and 
the fuel is wood or charcoal. Natives are so ac- 
customed to the floor that they prefer to work on 



214 Indian Life 

it; and a cook stirring a saucepan, is much more 
comfortable squatting on his haunches, than in a 
more elevated position. 

The servants' * ' lines ' ' are a row of huts, often 
mere hovels, adjoining the stables, and in the 
most distant corner of the compound. Bach ser- 
vant has one room, wherein dwell himself, wife, 
and family. If he is a Mahomedan he wull not 
unfrequently enclose a small patch in front of his 
compartment with an erection of bamboo matting 
to form a screen, and thus secure the privacy of 
his hareem. The servants form a small colou}^ in 
the compound, and a very moderate householder 
may find he is in practice the supporter of twenty 
human beings. 

Very few ladies ever enter their kitchens. In 
the words of the poet, *' 'tis better not," for where 
ignorance is bliss, why set yourself against your 
food ? But once a month, the prudent housewife 
inspects her cooking-pots, the reason being that 
they are always made of copper, and have to be 
periodically tinned, or they become poisonous. 
Many lives have been lost in India by the neglect 
of this precaution, and any sudden and inexplic- 
able indisposition always elicits the question, 
' * When were the dekjies last tinned ? ' ' 

A bachelor's bungalow is not unfrequently a 
barn in appearance, for, with the constant shifting 
of residence, furnishing is reduced to a minimum. 
His goods and chattels are hired, and of the most 
primitive description. Anything uglier and more 



"J -'^sem-Ji 




Bungalow Life 215 

cumbersome than the Anglo-Indian's furniture it 
would be hard to find. All the chairs are cane- 
bottomed, heavy, and with arms, and the only- 
comfortable ones are those for lounging in on the 
verandah, which have extending arms on which 
to elevate your legs. The tables are solid and 
ugly, generally a huge round one in the centre of 
the room and several small ones called ' * tea- 
poys," set indiscriminately about. A mat on the 
floor may or may not be relieved with a few rugs; 
but often the plaster is in bad repair, and crum- 
bles under the foot. There are no blinds, and the 
curtains are purely practical, and not ornamental. 
If possible, the bedroom furniture is a cut more sim- 
ple than that in the dwelling-rooms. A bed made 
of broad tape woven across a wooden framework 
is the usual couch for reposing on; a chest of 
drawers is a luxury, its place being more often 
taken by an alviirah^ or cupboard, with shelves in 
it. lyooking-glasses have a way of distorting the 
visage which is useful in putting people out of 
conceit with themselves, but leads to bloodshed in 
shaving, unless, as- is often the case, you turn 
your cheek to the barber, who gladly calls every 
morning. The toilette table is never draped, and 
the whole scheme of comfort is crude. All ablu- 
tions are performed in the bath-room, wherein a 
huge tub or zinc bath, and several clay gurrahs 
or earthen pipkins filled with water are the promi- 
nent features. Kvery one in India bathes once a 
day, and in the hotter districts often twice or 



2i6 Indian Life 

thrice, with a night-bath thrown in. The bed- 
ding nearly always shows sign of travel, and has 
not that neat inviting appearance associated 
with the white connterpaned cot in England. 

Notwithstanding the bare and desolate nature 
of the bachelor's abode, the Anglo-Indian lady 
generally manages to make the drawing-room in 
her bungalow pretty and artistic. There is great 
emulation in its decoration, and it surprises one 
to see what marvels of transformation can be 
effected by feminine taste and ingenuity. The 
first thing to catch the eye is the array of photo- 
graphs displayed ; it is the link with home. Then 
the tall ugly walls are hidden from sight with 
curtains, screens, fans, ornaments, and phulkar- 
ries. The floor is carpeted with a dhurrie, and 
the disposal of the furniture reflects resource if it 
sometimes leaves little space; whilst the piano at 
once brings you face to face with Western civilisa- 
tion. It is generally iron-framed, and constructed 
to withstand the climate, before the scorching 
heat of which an English instrument acquires a 
habit of collapsing. The room is always dark, 
partly because there are no windows, but also for 
the sake of coolness, or imaginary coolness, the 
subdued light lending itself to that state of self- 
deception. All light has to filter into the rooms 
through the verandahs, and these are protected 
with * ' chicks, ' ' which are screens made of loosely 
woven slips of bamboo. They stretch from pillar 
to pillar, and in practice make rooms out of the 



Bungalow Life 217 

verandahs. The doors are also guarded by similar 
contrivances to keep out flies. The trouble of 
drawing aside the chick on entering or leaving a 
room is one of the petty irritations of Indian life. 

In her drawing-room, for the chief portion of 
the day, the Anglo-Indian lady is as much a pris- 
oner by reason of the heat as the zenana woman 
is from custom. There is no shopping, and only 
the minimum of domestic duties to occupy her. 
She is by herself all day long, and thrown on her 
own resources of music, reading, letter-writing, or 
sketching. " The long, long, weary day " of the 
German song has been well parodied in one that 
bewails the ** long, long, Indian day." The only 
break is when an afternoon caller drops in; but 
callers are few in an up-country station. And, 
besides, every one meets every one else at the uni- 
versal gathering-place in the evening, which is 
probably the public gardens, ''the Company's 
Garden," as it is still sometimes called in old-time 
association with the Bast India Company. 

An afternoon nap is almost universal, if the flies 
will allow it. Flies by day and mosquitos by 
night are distinct trials. Most beds are smothered 
with mosquito curtains, which effectually keep 
away any little breath of air there is. But in the 
hotter districts no one ever dreams of sleeping 
without a punkah going all night, which is as 
necessary for rest and comfort as a pillow. The 
punkah, it is hardly needful to observe, is a huge 
swinging fan, pulled by a coolie, who squats in 



2i8 Indian Life 

the verandah outside, and under it a great ma- 
jority of Anglo-Indians pass their lives for no in- 
considerable time of the year. 

The servants in an Indian bungalow are numer- 
ous, though you have to engage many more in 
some presidencies than in others. In an average 
district, the bachelor will keep a cook, a man to 
do the waiting and house- work, a water-carrier, a 
horse-keeper, and probably a grass-cutter, a couple 
of punkah-coolies, and a scavenger, who is known 
as the * ' sweeper, ' ' and is an absolutely indispens- 
able individual under the sanitary conditions that 
exist. A married man, living "comfortably," 
will be called on to keep a cook, table-attendant, 
bearer, who combines the duties of valet and 
housemaid, water-carrier, washerman, a couple of 
horse-keepers, and as many grass-cutters, ditto 
punkah-coolies, a gardener to keep the compound 
under cultivation, a chupprassi or peon^ to hang 
about and make himself generally useful for mes- 
sages and carrying letters, and a sweeper. In 
more extravagant households, the cook has his 
* • mate ' ' or scullion, and the number of table-at- 
tendants, bearers, and chupprassis is multiplied, 
as also the horse-keepers and gardeners; and in 
nearly every establishment there is a derzie, or 
tailor and milliner combined, who does all the 
mending. I have quite forgotten to mention the 
ayah, or lady's-maid, who is absolutely essential 
when there is a lady in the house. The cost of 
these establishments of servants will vary from 



Bungalow Life 219 

three to twenty pounds and more a month, their 
wages ranging from six shillings for the punkah- 
coolies and grass-cutters to two pounds for the 
cook. It is a false economy to have a bad cook, 
for you want an artist to deal with the inferior 
raw material of the East, and to tempt the jaded 
appetite. 

Rent is an expensive item. In a small up- 
country station you may get a bungalow for three 
pounds a month — salaries, wages, house- rent, 
bills, and everything in India, are, or should be, 
paid monthly— but five to ten pounds is the aver- 
age rental, and in the metropolitan cities the cost 
is enormous, and people pay up to three and four 
hundred a year. Servants and house-rent are the 
two heaviest items in keeping up an Indian bun- 
galow. Otherwise the cost of living is compara- 
tively small. Bachelors very often contract with 
their cooks to feed them, paying a lump sum per 
month of from two to five pounds, and receiving 
in return breakfast, tiffin, and dinner, and early 
morning and afternoon tea. A lady who looks 
after her " godown " can do it for considerably 
less per head. In Bombay or Calcutta, most of 
the hotels and boarding-houses will lodge and feed 
a bachelor exceedingly well for ten pounds a 
month, and this saves all expense of servants ex- 
cept bearer and horse-keeper. When I first 
started housekeeping in the jungle, I used to pay 
two pounds for servant's wages, two pounds for 
house-rent, two pounds for my cook's contract for 



220 Indian Life 

food, one pound for the keep of a horse, and allow 
three pounds for such luxuries as tinned English 
stores and liquors, lamp-oil, and the daily paper, 
which, in those days, meant eight shillings a 
month. And I lived like a fighting cock! A 
quarter of a century later, my household expendi- 
ture, including a considerably larger staff of ser- 
vants, ranged from twenty to twenty-five pounds 
a month, and this is probably the average ex- 
pended by the ordinary Anglo-Indian outside the 
centres where living is proverbially expensive. 
For myself, I did not notice much difference in 
the cost during those twenty-five years, and 
European luxuries were decidedly much cheaper 
and better. Meat varies from twopence to three- 
pence a pound; bread is a penny a small loaf; 
vegetables, butter, and milk, the latter sold by 
weight, are much cheaper than in England; eggs 
run two for a penny, and tea you can purchase 
ridiculously cheaply, even so low as sixpence a 
pound. On the other hand, beer is a luxury that 
you will not drink in the jungles for less than 
eightpence or tenpence a pint, unless you get 
country-brewed, which is a little less expensive, 
and moderate in quality, and whisky will cost you 
four to five shilHngs a bottle. But soda-water is 
obtainable at sixpence or eightpence a dozen, and 
there is a manufactory in every considerable place 
where three or four Europeans reside. You can 
get good cigars for two shillings and eightpence 
to four shillings a hundred, but tobacco is dear. 



Bungalow Life 221 

Russian and American kerosene-oil is purchased 
by the five-gallon tin at about the same price as 
in England, and is the universal illuminant. 
Lamps are made especially for India, the ordinary 
English ones being of little use in the bungalow's 
large rooms, often with dark ceilings that absorb 
a great deal of light. I once took out half a dozen 
duplex-burner lamps from England, and discarded 
them all within a month, as they were utterly 
powerless to perform their purpose. All cooking 
is done by charcoal, and this is one of the heaviest 
expenses in the kitchen, as also is firewood if you 
happen to live in one of the untimbered districts. 
The Anglo-Indian is, or should be, an early 
riser. To lie late in bed is called a " Europe 
morning." A cup of tea is always served when 
you are awakened, and as soon as you are dressed 
comes chotahazri, or the little breakfast, consist- 
ing of tea, toast, eggs, and fruit. The morning 
ride follows, and the most is made of the cool hours 
before eight or, at latest, nine o'clock. With the 
military, however, this is the busiest part of the 
day, being devoted to parades. But office men, 
by which you include most Government officials 
and all commercial men, have to breakfast at nine 
to reach their courts or offices in time for ten 
o'clock opening. Two is the hour for tiffin, often 
served at office; in fact, in some of the merchants' 
offices in Calcutta this meal is provided by the 
firm. Dinner is always as late as possible, for 
after sunset the gay and social part of the twenty- 



222 Indian Life 

four hours begins. After dinner every one ad- 
journs to the verandah, and stretches himself out 
in a lounge-chair to smoke, and, the process of 
digestion over, it is early to bed if you want a full 
night's sleep. 

In the hot weather, it is customary to * * shut up 
the bungalow ' ' at about seven in the morning, 
when the temperature is moderately low in com- 
parison with what it will rise to a few hours later. 
Every door and window is closed, and thereafter 
the greatest care taken to make entrances and 
exits as quickly as possible, for a door left open 
for any length of time soon raises the temperature. 
If kept carefully closed, it is remarkable how cool 
the room keeps compared with the heat out of 
doors. Thermantidotes and tattis are other de- 
vices for generating cool air, being a system of 
forcing a draught through wet screens of grass, 
which are cooled by the evaporation. They are 
delicious but dangerous. Water is cooled for 
drinking on the same principle (if ice is unpro- 
curable), being placed in a porous earthenware 
vessel, and swung to and fro in the heated atmo- 
sphere, with the result that what was tepid and 
nauseous becomes sufficiently chilled. In old 
days, a special servant was kept, who was an ex- 
pert at water-cooling, and did nothing else; but 
in modern days, few places except those off the 
line of rail are out of reach of ice, the price of 
which is within the range of even the natives, 
being retailed at about a halfpenny a pound. 



Bungalow Life 223 

Nothing strikes the English eye so much on 
first taking up residence in an Indian bungalow 
as the tameness of the bird and animal life that 
haunts it. The sparrows are in and out of all 
the rooms, and even build their nests in a chink 
of the ceiling. I have watched the most prodigious 
battles between a cock sparrow and his reflection 
in my mirror, and he and his kind are the most 
abandoned pilferers when the table is set for 
meals. The minah, or Indian starling, is tamer 
than the English robin, and a noisy nuisance, be- 
ing engaged in permanent feuds with all his con- 
nections. The crow is a noted robber, and nothing 
is safe from him; leave a cutlet on a plate, and he 
will snatch it off in a twinkling. Kites swirl over 
the compound all day long, and make the sweeper's 
life a burden, watching over the chickens. Mon- 
keys in some districts play havoc with your gar- 
den. The little grey squirrels are in and out of 
your verandah all day long, and ugly lizards bask 
in the sun on the floor, with occasional swift darts 
at a resting fly. All these are * * shockingly tame. ' ' 
If the list of aliens in your premises ended here, 
you would not have much to complain of. But 
there are other and less agreeable inhabitants, 
such as snakes, scorpions, and centipedes. Spi- 
ders, too, of hideous dimensions, and rats, called 
"bandicoots," of gigantic size, and musk-rats, 
that leave an odour behind them most horrible. 
It is said, I believe with perfect truth, that a musk- 
rat running over a bottle of wine or soda-water 



224 Indian Life 

will taint its contents. You seldom hear of Euro- 
peans being stung by snakes, scorpions, or cen- 
tipedes; but the pests are, nevertherless, often 
numerous, — how common in some places, may be 
gathered from the fact that I have known a dog, 
that was particularly clever at the trick, to kill 
nine scorpions in my drawing-room in one even- 
ing, just after the bursting of the monsoon, when 
the creatures were swarming out of the cracks 
and crevices in which they had passed the hot 
weather. I have known only two cases of fatal 
snake-bites, both natives, during a period when I 
must have seen some thousands of the reptiles, 
and never without a shuddering horror I could 
never overcome. Lesser pests are found in the 
flying insects of the rainy season, smelly objec- 
tionables, and winged ants that swarm in millions, 
and, attracted by the light, seem to take a delight 
in flopping into your soup at dinner. Nor must 
white ants be forgotten, which perhaps do more 
damage than any other insect. They will eat 
away the bottom of a portmanteau, or the sole of a 
boot, in a single night, and they make it impos- 
sible to have boarded floors. Window frames and 
doorposts require to be periodically renewed, for 
you suddenly find them collapsing, and on ex- 
amination discover they are perfectly hollow, 
having been burrowed into by white ants so art- 
fully that only the thin skin of the surface is left 
intact. Fish-moths are a funny little insect, very 
like a silvery fish, that dine ofi" your books, bind- 



Bungalow Life 225 

ing or inside, with impartiality. Rats and mice 
of the common English variety haunt your " go- 
down," and as nobody keeps cats in India, you 
are very much at their mercy. You are spared 
the ravages of the cat, only to find sometimes a 
worse thief in the mongoose, which, if it gets into 
your fowl-house, will kill every inmate, and drink 
its blood, and decamp. And for your water there 
are times when you have to beware of guinea- 
worms, and always of the microbes of dysentery 
and cholera. Fleas, et hoc genus, you cannot keep 
out of a house with its cement floors, and mats for 
them to find instant refuge in, and probably dogs 
enjoying the run of your rooms. In the rainy 
season, I have often suffered from a regular inva- 
sion of fleas, when they came into the house in 
legions and established themselves until fine 
weather set in, and then took it into their head 
to depart almost as unanimously as they entered. 
Lastly, the night brings with it bats, some of them 
harmless little fellows, but very irritating in your 
dining or drawing room; others, huge brutes, 
called flying foxes, that pillage your fruit trees. 
'* The naturalist on the prowl " (to quote the title 
of a very entertaining Anglo-Indian book) will 
find plenty of subjects for investigation in and 
around the bungalow. 

lyooking back on Indian life, the one place in 
the bungalow that always recurs to my memory 
with pleasurable sensations is the verandah. 
There is nothing like it in Knglish homes. There 



226 Indian Life 

you always find the most comfortable armchairs, 
each with its small teapoy by its side to hold your 
peg-tumbler. With the chicks down, the glare 
kept out, and the sun round at the other side of 
the house, the shady verandah becomes the abid- 
ing-place. It is generally festooned with creeping 
flowers, and you can see to read in it without that 
straining required in the darkened drawing-rooms 
of Anglo-India. And it is inseparably associated 
with that delicious hour after dinner, so cool and 
sleepy and lazy, when you lay yourself out for 
perhaps the only part of the day free from positive 
physical discomfort. It has, too, many other as- 
sociations; here your dogs, best companions of 
your lonely exile, lie and stretch themselves all 
day long; hither are your horses brought to re- 
ceive their morning treat of bread or sugar-cane. 
From here you can loll and watch the sparrows 
and the squirrels and the minahs, and last, but 
not least, the crafty crows, that each and all 
* ' have a song to sing, oh ! " if you can only under- 
stand their language, and enter into their idio- 
syncrasies. And here you receive your guests, 
if there is any intimacy between you and them, 
without stiff formality. I vow it is the pleasantest 
spot in Anglo-India; the one associated with its 
pleasantest moments, and to which memory re- 
curs with just a soupgon of regret that in returning 
to England we have cut ourselves off from veran- 
dah life! 



CHAPTER XVI 

OUT-OF-DOOR I.IF:B 

OUT-OF-DOOR life in India may be divided 
into three categories. First of all there is 
the life known as "going into camp," or "on 
tour," which many Government officials are 
obliged to follow during the cold weather in the 
execution of their ordinary duties; then the ha- 
bitual open air employment of engineers, forest 
officers, planters, railway employees, and so forth; 
and lastly, out-of-door life in the shape of sport 
and recreation. 

From the beginning of November to the end of 
February or March as much of Anglo-India as is 
able keeps in the open, to make up for those eight 
weary months of confinement, during which it has 
been imprisoned under punkahs and bottled up in 
bungalows. This is the season when the Govern- 
ment officials travel about their districts on in- 
spection tour, which, to those who like riding and 
shooting, is the most enjoyable of all the various 
phases of duty. 

Camping life is, indeed, a delightful institution 
of India. The itinerary of the district tour is 
227 



2 28 Indian Life 

mapped out, and preparations are made for a 
three or four months' gipsy existence under the 
skies, but accompanied with the refinement of 
comfort which the Anglo-Indian knows so well 
how to secure under such conditions; for tent-life 
has been brought to a high pitch of luxury. The 
camp equipage will consist of a big office tent, and 
a couple for dwelling in, with accommodation for 
the servants. There will be bullock-carts, or 
camels, to carry the baggage, including the most 
ingenious articles of camp- furniture, which can 
be telescoped or folded into portable dimensions. 
Indeed, you will sometimes see superimposed on 
a couple of camels a variety of beds, tables, chairs, 
and chests of drawers (these take into halves, and 
are slung one on each side), which, when opened 
and set out, suggest the requirement of a small 
pantechnicon van for their removal. Generally a 
portion of the poultry-yard is carried during these 
excursions, and a goat or two driven along to 
supply milk. And when the camp is pitched 
under a shady mango tope, or grove of trees, the 
dhurries or carpets laid, the ingenious collapsible 
furniture arrayed in its expanded usefulness, the 
camp-lamps shedding their bright glow within 
the tent, a crackling fire blazing in front of the 
door, why, there are very few habitations for which 
you would wish to change this travelling one. 

The cold- weather tour of the head official of a 
district, who is in effect its governor, is a sort of 
triumphal progress. He lives on the fat of the 




I ;i 



Out-of-Door Life 229 

land; at his nod transport and provisions of every 
description appear in plenty; for him, the best 
khubber where game is to be found, and beaters 
galore to drive it out of its haunts. At each 
halting-place the headman comes to offer him 
welcome, and the finest the village can afford, 
and all the ryots assemble to make their salaams. 
His tour is like an old English " visitation," and, 
if an energetic officer, he probably does more good 
in his district during these few cold weather 
months, when he is brought face to face with its 
requirements, than during the rest of the year. 
For they bring him into touch with the people in 
a way that can never occur in station life. 

I know few people who fail to appreciate tent- 
life in India. It carries with it a sensation of its 
own of novelty, freedom, and movement. Here 
to-day, and there to-morrow! Away from the 
civilisation of the head station, and in a delight- 
ful atmosphere of unconventionality! Not until a 
man has spent several long months in office and 
bungalow can he fully realise the joy and relief of 
the plain and jungle, far transcending the pleasure 
of a seaside holiday in Kngland, or a trip to the 
northern moors. And, best of all, camping out 
amalgamates duty with pleasure. What health, 
what spirits, what appetite it brings; all the rust 
of bungalow life is soon rubbed off, and the jaded 
palate, that has toyed with three nominal meals a 
day all through the burning hot weather and the 
steaming rains, now astonishes even its owner. 



230 Indian Life 

One is accustomed to associate tent-life in Eng- 
land with wet Wimbledons or blazing Bisleys, or 
excursions up river, and experiments in cooking 
that are generally unsuccessful. But they know 
how to do the thing better in India, where a camp 
conducted by experienced and expert servants is 
apt to astonish the new-comer. Do not imagine 
you rough it because you live in tents. Except- 
ing that your roof is canvas, there is little differ- 
ence between your comforts on tour and those in 
your bungalow. You will dine as well as in your 
dining-room, though your kitchen is nothing but 
a few stones grouped to support the cooking-pots 
under a tree. And you may reckon upon abso- 
lutely fine weather, with a temperature like the 
English climate in July or ^ugust, unless your 
fate takes you to some of the hotter districts. 
But, ordinarily speaking, no one goes out into 
camp until the temperature is in the pleasant 
stage. 

If you are fond of shooting, there are few places 
where you cannot indulge in it. Shooting is per- 
haps the greatest charm of ofiicial camp-life. It 
is easy for the official, who in camp is entirely his 
own master, to arrange his ofi&ce hours so as to 
permit of three or four hours with the gun. In 
the open country there is coursing also, and a 
couple of greyhounds will afford a pleasant varia- 
tion of sport. An hour's stroll in the evening 
nearly always takes you for a round where you 
can add to your larder. 



Out-of-Door Life 231 

And then the pleasure of marching. You are 
going, let us sa}^, to shift camp to-morrow. After 
dinner, your big dwelling- tent is struck and packed 
whilst you are enjoying your postprandial cheroot 
over the camp-fire, and, with its furniture, sent 
ahead to the next halting-place. Your sleeping- 
tent remains for you to spend the night in, and 
after early breakfast the next morning, you mount 
3^our horse and canter the ten or fifteen miles that 
have to be travelled, or perhaps shoot over a part 
of the ground, arriving at your new camp at ten 
or eleven o'clock, to find your tent pitched and a 
breakfast awaiting you, for the cook went on 
ahead after serving your dinner. By tiffin-time, 
your sleeping-tent will have arrived, and by three 
o'clock, except for the change of scene and sur- 
roundings, you will hardly tell that any alteration 
has been made in the encampment. And so you 
march, from place to place, alwaj^s comfortable, 
never put out, and living with as much regularity 
as you would at home, except for that unpunctu- 
ality which is often a concomitant of shooting, 
when a long chase after a wounded quarry, or 
the seductions of a particularly hot field of quail, 
or well-stocked swamp of snipe, keep you abroad 
longer than you intended. 

Take it for all in all, there is no phase of Anglo- 
Indian life so delightful as camping out. Whether 
it is the official on his rounds of duty, or the sol- 
dier on the route march from cantonment to can- 
tonment, or the sportsman engaged in the pursuit 



232 Indian Life 

he loves best, you may be sure one and all are en- 
joying themselves. For my own part, the happiest 
holidays I spent in my life were under canvas, 
and when I look back to those camping-days on 
the plains of Kattywar or the Punjab, in the jun- 
gles of the Ghauts and the Terai, or on the slopes 
of the Himalayas, I have an idea that I would 
change the civilisation of this congenial home-life 
for India again, if it only meant camping out and 
shooting ! 

Let us turn now to those whose duties are al- 
ways more or less out of doors in India. I will 
pass over the soldier, because his career in canton- 
ments is not an open air one except so far as the 
cooler morning hours are concerned, and in the 
cold weather he camps it during the relief season 
in much the same way as the civilian official. 
Saving when on active service, he is practically 
resident in his barracks or bungalow during those 
fierce noontide heats when exposure is trying. 

Perhaps the hardest life of any lived by a Euro- 
pean in India is that of the engine-driver on the 
railway. True, he gets remarkably good wages, 
two to three hundred pounds a year; but he earns 
them! In the hot weather it is by no means an 
unknown thing for an engine-driver to be found 
dead from heat apoplexy on his engine, and many 
European guards suffer in a lesser degree. And 
on the railway generally there is a constant ex- 
posure to the sun that makes it a far from enviable 
line of life. 



Out-of-Door Life 233 

Civil engineers in the Public Works Department 
have also a great deal of hot- weather outdoor 
work. It is a good season for building, and they 
are constantly called upon to inspect the works, 
such as roads, bridges, and canals, under their 
charge. For them, camp-life does not bear such a 
pleasant complexion as for some of their confreres 
in Government employ, and to keep well in touch 
with your district in May and June, and * * slog 
at it" out of doors in a temperature of over a 
hundred in the shade, is apt to try the strongest 
man. OflScials in the police suffer the same in- 
conveniences, whilst the forest officer, the ''jungle 
sahib''' as he is called, is by the very nature of 
his occupation a man of the open. Such officials 
are practically touring nine or ten months out of 
the twelve, only housing up in the headquarters 
station during the monsoon months, when they 
do all their office work and annual reports. 

Perhaps of all out-of-door workers the planters 
have the best time of it, especially those favoured 
ones who live in the " hills," like the planters of 
Darjeeling and the Neilgherries. Even under 
much less pleasant circumstances they get accli- 
matised, and there are old stagers in steaming 
Assam who vow it is one of the best climates in 
India. The tea-planters are the most numerous in 
this body, and are chiefly distributed over North- 
ern and North-Kastern India, with a few in Tra- 
vancore. In Southern India are the coffee-planters, 
confined practically to the Madras Presidency. 



234 Indian Life 

Indigo planting, whose home is in Bengal and 
Behar, is a decaying industry, but the life used to 
be reckoned the best of the three. All enjoy a 
holiday more or less in the cold weather, when 
work is slack. 

lyife on a tea plantation, when markets and 
seasons are favourable and the climate good, goes 
as near perfection as Anglo-Indian life may for a 
young and active man. The home is often a 
settled one, and that is a great factor in making 
yourself comfortable in an Indian bungalow. 
You furnish your house for living in, not for 
scrambling out of; you plant your garden with 
trees whose fruit you may legitimately hope to 
eat, and you settle down to make yourself com- 
fortable. Unhappily, the good old days are past 
when prosperity was universal, and the modern 
tea- planter has to bear a heavy burden of anxiety 
under the altered conditions that have made the 
industry a precarious one. 

Here is a description of a tea-planter's day on 
his estate. He is up before sunrise, and after a 
good chotahazri, to which he seems able to do 
better justice than most folk, off to his factory to 
take the morning reports and inspect the earlier 
stages of manufacture. This keeps him fully em- 
ploj^ed until nine o'clock, when he will jump on 
his horse and ride round the outdoor work, in- 
specting the gangs of coolies in the field until the 
eleven o'clock gong sounds to suspend work. 
Galloping back to his bungalow, he enjoys a bath, 



Out-of-Door Life 235 

and sits down to the "planter's breakfast," which 
is not a mere bacon-and-eggs affair, but a dejeuner 
a lafourchette, with a reputation of its own. Often 
it is partaken of in the verandah, and is always 
an elaborate function round which the working- 
day revolves. Then comes the lounge in the long 
grasshopper verandah chair and the luxurious 
cheroot that has a better flavour than any other 
in the twenty-four hours, with, perhaps, forty 
winks to be winked, though as a rule the planter 
is far too busy in the hot weather to snatch a nap. 
About half-past twelve there is another visit to be 
paid to the factory and office, a court to be held at 
which administrative work is gone through, such 
as paying the men, giving out contracts, physick- 
ing the sick, and finally there comes the hot after- 
noon visit to the operations in the field, the most 
trying time of the whole day. At half- past four 
the planter knocks off, and may be considered to 
have done a fair day's dag, or work. Now comes 
recreation — lawn-tennis, a ride to visit a neigh- 
bour, or a walk with the dogs. This in the manu- 
facturing season; in the cold weather, when the 
factory is shut, one round of the outdoor work 
generally suffices, and there are long afternoons 
to be spent in shooting, or playing cricket, or 
other sports in which many can find time to meet 
together and take a part. Sunset, with the short 
twilight of a southern land, terminates the after- 
noon all too soon, but not the pleasure, for now 
all collect in the verandah for pegs and pipes until 



236 Indian Life 

dinner. Or perchance there is a piano in the 
bungalow, by no means an uncommon thing, and 
then there is a musical interlude, or, equally 
popular, a rubber of whist. But whatsoever form 
of diversion occurs, it is flavoured with ' * planters' 
hospitality," which has won a name for itself. 
After dinner there is little going on, for the planter 
as a rule falls asleep after a long day in the open, 
and if he manages a game of whist it will be as 
much as he cares to keep awake for, for he will 
get up at or before sunrise next morning. 

A planter is an autocrat on his estate, and if he 
is lucky enough to live in a district where the la- 
bour is easily done, and what is more import- 
ant, easily obtained, there is no man in India 
more free and independent. But of late years, a 
cloud has hovered over the planting industry, 
and the ''good times" for indigo, tea, or coffee 
have gone by. " Economy" is the cry, and a 
cutting down of salaries, never munificent, the 
result — in some cases to the extent of half the 
former emoluments. Indian planting was a fine 
opening once for energetic youth, without much 
brains; it is so no longer, even if the youth has 
brains as well as energy. 

Lastly, in this review of out-of-door life in In- 
dia, we come to sport and recreation, and here is 
a feast of good things. The Europeans in the 
East enter with a peculiar zest, both from en- 
thusiasm and because of the benefit that comes 
from physical exercise into sports that take them 



Out-of-Door Life 237 

out of their bungalows. I suppose the game of 
lawn-tennis has done more for the average Anglo- 
Indian than all the drugs in the pharmacopoeia. I 
have seen men playing it in the height of the hot 
season, with a turkish-bath towel hung on a pole 
just outside the court, the condition of which at the 
end of a set was eloquent of some evil humours ex- 
pelled from the body. Tennis is a game adapted for 
the limited society of an up-country station, and 
one in which ladies can not only join, but in 
India, from constant practice, become almost as 
proficient as men. The courts are very hard as 
a rule, many being made of beaten earth, and the 
game requires a display of far more agility than 
when played on grass. 

Cricket is indulged in a good deal in the cold 
weather, on very fast pitches as a rule. It is 
particularly popular amongst the military, for in 
civil society it is not often feasible to get up a 
full game. But in a cantonment there are often 
a grand series of matches through the winter. 
Football is not unfrequently played in the rainy 
season, when the temperature is most trying, and 
the energy and enthusiasm shown under such 
circumstances speak eloquently for its popularity. 
The inter-regimental Football Challenge Cup 
gives rise to an exciting competition; in fact, for 
the keenest rivalry in purely English games you 
have always to go to a cantonment. Otherwhere, 
except in the big cities, the population is too small 
to supply full sides for cricket or football. 



238 Indian Life 

Racing has been the favourite sport in India 
from time immemorial for those who can afford it, 
but, of recent years, the rich rajahs have stormed 
the turf, and monopolised all the prizes. There 
are, however, a large number of '* sky meetings," 
as they are called, where the man of small means, 
who loves the sport for the sake of the horse, is 
able to enter his own nag and ride it, and at these, 
if the business is less imposing, the fun is none the 
less. The gymkhana meet, which is a purely local 
affair, gives the amateur a field day, and brings 
the pastime within reach of all, and as every 
one owns a "gee," and riding is a universal ac- 
complishment, the ''scurry stakes" appeal to all. 
Nor are these gymkhanas limited to racing, but 
are an olla podrida of all sorts of sports, and you 
can spend an exceedingly entertaining afternoon 
at them, engaging in, or looking on, a variety of 
competitions which include tent-pegging, lime- 
cutting, and kindred exhibitions of skill on horse- 
back, for the art of equitation enters largely into 
all sportive gatherings. 

Polo is a very favourite game in India, as may 
well be imagined in a country where every sub- 
altern keeps a horse, and has not the slightest 
objection to risking his neck. No military can- 
tonment and but few of the larger stations are 
without their polo ground, and there is always a 
** polo evening " once or twice a week. The cari- 
caturist who is good at horses with his pencil will 
find many humours on the Indian polo field, 



Out-of-Door Life 239 

where men with slender purses play the game on 
the same long-suffering animals they ride in the 
morning, and trap in the middle day, and whose 
original cost may not have exceeded a ten-pound 
note. For you can get a very passable country- 
bred nag for that sum, and for twenty pounds a 
mount you need not be ashamed to be seen strid- 
ing. Some of the hill ponies will give you extra- 
ordinary value for money. I remember buying 
one for six pounds that I rode every day for twelve 
years, and he was good enough to give away but 
too good to shoot at the end of that period. But 
that was up in the Himalayas, and the same pony 
would probably have commanded three times the 
price in the plains. I have owned perhaps a score 
of what are called ''plantation ponies," and never 
gave more than twenty pounds for the best of 
them; several of the cheaper ones carried me forty 
and forty-five miles a day. 

If I have left pig-sticking and shooting to the 
last, it is certainly not because they are the least 
in the sporting pleasures of India. The former is 
accounted the finest of all field sports, and takes 
the place of hunting in England, with the ad- 
ditional advantage of being within the reach of 
many who could never afford to ride to hounds at 
home. The sport is fostered by " tent clubs," 
which are practically camping-out clubs, and Sun- 
day is perhaps the most popular day for a meet. 
The members ride out to a pre-arranged camp on 
the Saturday afternoon, hunt all Sunday, and are 



240 Indian Life 

back at their stations on Monday in time for office 
or parade. The sport dates from the eighteenth 
century, and the old term of the " fraternity of 
pig-stickers" still holds good, for there is a verit- 
able brotherhood amongst those who follow this 
entrancing method of hunting. 

I,ast of all comes shooting, which I may call the 
universal sport of India. Poor in resources is that 
Anglo-Indian who does not possess a gun. The 
game is free to all to shoot, the only restriction 
being a " close " season, and, in some districts, a 
regard for the prejudices of the natives. 

Thus peacocks in many places and neilghai^ or 
wild cattle, are accounted sacred, and, in fact, so 
tame, owing to immunity from chase, that no 
sportsman would shoot them. The former may 
be seen sunning themselves on the village walls, 
and the neilghai is a privileged despoiler of crops, 
who has never experienced anything more dread- 
ful than a hoot. Tiger- shooting is the sport of 
the wealthy, for it entails a heavy expenditure in 
elephants, beaters, and general arrangements. 
Jungle hdnking for big game, such as sambre, 
deer, and animals which require to be driven to- 
wards the guns out of thick jungle, also costs a 
considerable amount, for although beaters are 
only paid twopence or threepence a day per head, 
when you have to engage them in regiments, it is 
prudent to tot up the outlay. But antelope stalk- 
ing in the plains is open to most people at the ex- 
pense of a railway fare — you may occasionally see 



Out-of-Door Life 241 

the buck as you pass through the wilder parts of 

the country in the train — and can be combined 

with small-game shooting. The railways have, 

however, done much to exterminate the antelope 

in many parts of India, and render them very 

wild. I remember, thirty years ago, shooting in 

Kattywar, and seeing herds of many hundreds of 

buck where nowadays ten are quite difl&cult to 

come across. It is the same with the more savage 

wild animals. In my plantation was a ravine 

called the ''Wolves' nullah," from the wolves 

that once swarmed in it; but not one has been 

seen there for twenty years. 

It is, however, the small game that never fails 

to give sport. Partridge, hare, snipe, wild-duck, 

and quail are open to almost any Anglo-Indian 

who takes the trouble to look for them. There is 

no fun equal to snipe and quail shooting for the 

amount of blazing away it gives you, and both 

birds are excellent for the table, which is more 

than you can say for Indian game in general. 

Few sports surpass duck- shooting, if you get into 

a good spot, and, after the woodcock, the mallard 

is about the best eating bird in India. I do not 

think English people realise how easily Indian 

shooting is to be enjoyed. In 1874, I made a 

sporting trip to India for six months, and after 

deducting two for the voyage, much slower then 

than it is now, had four months as good sport as 

any one could desire, and, big and small, killed 

about three thousand head of game. The entire 
16 



242 Indian Life 

cost of the trip was under two hundred pounds; 
but I ** gipsy 'd " it in camp, knocking about with 
a single small tent, one horse, and a couple of 
camels. Two or three going together could ac- 
complish such a trip nowadays as economically, 
and if *' furloughs " in England were as long and 
as common as in India, I could not imagine a 
better way of spending them than three or four 
months' camping under an Indian sky. 

The out-of-door recreations of city life in India 
need little description. There is something of 
the cockney in the Anglo-Indian who lives in 
Calcutta or Bombay. A ride is generally the 
limit of his outdoor exercise, and he ** Rotten- 
rows " it as gingerly as you may see in Hyde 
Park. More frequently the limit of his horse- 
manship is the bandstand, where he lolls in his 
saddle, or nerves himself for a walk by strand or 
seashore. In Bombay, there is a good deal of 
yachting, and in the swift-sailing lateen-rigged 
boats, it is passing pleasant to spend an evening in 
the harbour, and better still to take an extended 
trip up some of the creeks. But the more strenu- 
ous exercises always gave me the more pleasure 
and profit, and I look back to the days I spent in 
jungle and jheel, with rifle and gun, a couple of 
good nags to carry me afield, and a leash of grey- 
hounds to encourage me to a gallop after a jackal 
now and again, I look backward to those with a 
sigh, as I find myself surrounded with the bricks 
and mortar of London, and recognise that there 



Out-of-Door Life 



243 



are some phases of Anglo-Indian oiit-of-door life 
you cannot duplicate in England, wish you ever 
so hard. If Kastern exile were all composed of 
camp-life, very few would care to terminate it 
until overtaken by that fatal ailment called Anno 
Domini. 




CHAPTKR XVII 

SEJPIA SURROUNDINGS 

THE Anglo-Indian cannot escape from the 
tyranny of the brown skin. There is no 
privacy in India; the fierce glare that beats upon 
a throne is hardly less inquisitorial than the quiet 
glances of apparently mild brown eyes directed at 
the unconscious Anglo-Indian unceasingly. 

The magnificent staff of native servants, about 
which so much has been written and remarked, 
is, in effect, a staff of spies. There is no escape 
from them, and from the time that you tumble 
out of bed in the morning to the hour when you 
turn in again, you are never free from the sensa- 
tion of "somebody there." Even through the 
silent night hours the periodical cough of the 
punkah coolie serves to remind you of- the ever- 
watchful presence. You live in a perpetual qui 
vive^ for amidst these sepia surroundings you 
know you are the conspicuous object. 

By nature, natives are a most inquisitive folk, 
and India is a land oigup, which is the vernacu- 
lar for gossip. Whatever you do, say, and (I was 
almost adding) think, is reported, and whatever 
244 



Sepia Surroundings 245 

happens in 3^our bungalow becomes common in- 
formation to your neighbours. Anglo-Indians, 
and especially their wives, are in many cases con- 
firmed gossips. The ayah^ or lady's-maid, has a 
genius for disseminating scandal, and I have been 
led to believe that more tittle-tattle is talked dur- 
ing the hour when the hair of Anglo-Indian wo- 
mankind is being brushed than at any other of 
the twenty-four. Nor can I acquit the masculine 
sex of freedom from a similar curiosity, for it often 
displays a distinct partiality for listening to the 
gup of the barber, or the babblings of the bearer 
who dresses his master. 

And here, in passing, I may make a note of the 
lazy and luxurious habits into which sepia sur- 
roundings seduce the Anglo- Indian, and the royal 
way in which he adapts himself to being waited 
upon. There are many little personal offices in 
India which it is derogatory to perform for yourself, 
and the extension of this leads to the performance 
of several others by proxy. No one, for instance, 
laces up his own boots, or carries a parcel, or 
undertakes anything in the nature of an errand, 
and I have seen Europeans walking in the rain 
with natives to carry their umbrellas over them. 
But it is in his dressing-room that this peculiar 
trait in the Anglo-Indian character is emphasised. 
Many a man reverts to the habits of his child- 
hood, and practically allows his bearer to dress 
him. His vest and shirt are held open for him to 
slip his head and shoulders into, the passage of 



246 Indian Life 

his trousers is simplified, his socks and shoes are 
put on for him, and assistance with his cummer- 
bund^ or waistband, follows as a matter of course. 
It is sometimes really ludicrous to see young fel- 
lows, a few months in the country, adapt them- 
selves to these Sybaritic idiosyncrasies! As for 
old stagers, they really become almost as helpless 
as infants, and will employ the barber to cut their 
toenails. After a day's shooting, the sportsman's 
feet are usually washed by his faithful attendant, 
and the brushing and folding of clothes are per- 
formances that the average Englishman in India 
forgets how to accomplish. 

If you do not find privacy in the dressing-room, 
you can hardly be free from espionage in the rest 
of the bungalow, where it is chronic. The ver- 
andah is guarded by the chupprassi, who squats 
or stands there to run errands, carry letters (there 
are no messages despatched in India, where all 
communications are sent by chits^ which is the 
anglicised and abbreviated Hindustani for 
*' notes "), and act generally the part of a human 
bell. In Kgypt, you *' clap hands, clap hands till 
somebody comes ; " but in India, you lift up your 
voice and shout, which is sometimes inconvenient 
and often irritating. By the word you use, you 
reveal to which Presidency you belong. If you 
belong to Bengal, you cry, Koihaif w^hich means, 
* ' Is anybody there ? " if to Bombay, the summons 
is for * * Boy ! ' ' The chupprassi is the chief of 
spies. I^esser ones are the gardener, who keeps 



Sepia Surroundings 247 

his eye upon you as you lounge in the verandah; 
the groom, who attends you when you are out rid- 
ing, and is an athletic runner; the kitmudghar, 
who waits behind your chair at table, and the 
native clerks who squat round your feet at oflQce. 
Try how you will, you cannot get away from the 
native; he is "" in the air," so to speak, and you 
come at last to resign yourself to a species of 
tyranny that completely robs you of the charm of 
solitude. It is an atmosphere difficult to realise 
in England, where an Knglishman's home is his 
castle; in India, the bungalow is a combination of 
a conservatory and observatory. 

And what makes this state of things so anoma- 
lous is that there is no assimilation between black 
and white. They are, and always must remain, 
races foreign to one another in sentiment, sympa- 
thies, feelings, and habits. Between you and a 
native friend there is a great gulf which no inti- 
macy can bridge— the gulf of caste and custom. 
Amalgamation is utterly impossible in any but 
the most superficial sense, and affinity out of the 
question. 

Nor in its material sense is affinity desirable. 
Without wishing to say anything offensive about 
my black brother, I must protest that when the 
atmosphere is too redolent of him and the ungu- 
ents with which he anoints himself, he is decidedly 
objectionable, and there are times, many times, 
when it is as well that he should not get between 
you and the breeze. It is a delicate subject to 



248 Indian Life 

dwell on, but decidedly one of the drawbacks of 
too ' * close ' ' sepia surroundings. I will only in- 
stance a single illustration. It is one of the an- 
omalies of railway travelling in India that whilst 
third-class carriages are reserved for the "poor- 
white," the first- and second-class passengers have 
no guarantee against the intrusion of gentlemen 
of colour whose domestic and social habits are not 
in accord with our ideas of delicacy of behaviour. 
There are native * * compliments ' ' after a hearty 
meal which are simply disgusting to an Anglo- 
Saxon; and nature did not build the white man 
and black on suitable lines to hugger-mugger it 
in a small saloon on a railway, which may be 
their mutual abode for two or three days, I am 
not exaggerating when I say that the presence of 
a native in the same carriage with you doubles 
the disgust one feels for a long, hot, and trying 
journey in a small, stuffy space. 

Let us turn to another and less unpleasant as- 
pect of the sepia. It is particularly conspicuous 
in ofl&ce life, where all clerical work is performed 
by educated natives. A civilian's office is manned 
with Hindu and Mahomedan scribes, and all the 
* * writers " in a commercial house are natives. 
That they make industrious machines no one can 
deny; but they are apt to be trying to the temper 
at times, and require an extraordinarily alert 
check kept on their manoeuvres and blunders. 
Once get them outside their routine of work, and 
occasion them to draw on their imagination, and 



Sepia Surroundings 249 

the result is disastrous. They cannot be used for 
correspondence, for they think on an entirely dif- 
ferent plane from that of the European, and their 
eccentricities of composition are phenomenal. 
"Baboo English," as it is called, is often more 
comical than Mark Twain. It revels in polysyl- 
labics and lexicographers' terms; straightforward 
English is a great deal too simple for the Baboo, 
and single syllable words are insufficient to show 
off his learning. * * So much for your boasted Brit- 
ish jurisprudence! " was the crushing commentary 
fired off by one indignant Baboo when an Eng- 
lishman accidentally trod on his toes in a crowd. 
A European out shooting peppered a villager with 
snipe shot, and compensated him with ten rupees. 
In order to retain a written record of the transac- 
tion, he ordered his clerk to obtain a receipt for 
the money, and the phraseology the native wit hit 
on was, " To compounding one bloody murder, 
ten rupees. Omissions excepted." *' Sir," wrote 
another of these clerkly originalities, "pray ex- 
cuse from office this day on account of boil on left 
elbow as per margin, ' ' and illustrated the tumour, 
to scale, on the side of the sheet. Letters in 
this style are common in India, where the sepia 
thinks the Englishman much better approached 
by epistle, and hires scribes to write ' * petitions ' ' 
detailing complaints or aspirations. The profes- 
sional letter-writer is an established and well- 
patronised functionary in India. 

I have no doubt the other side of the picture, 



250 Indian Life 

which shows the mistakes English folk make in 
expressing themselves in the native languages, 
can display just as many comicalities if they were 
brought to notice. Meem- sahib- bdt^ or the ladies' 
rendering of the vernacular is notoriously uncon- 
ventional, and Tommy Atkins speaks a lingo of 
his own which nobody outside a regimental bazaar 
can understand. The Indian Charivari, an at- 
tempt at an Oriental Punch, which has long ceased 
to exist, enshrined in its pages many gems of 
Anglo-Hindustani. But it is against the code of 
a native's etiquette to laugh, much less to deride, 
and he allows such lapses to pass without a change 
in his sober countenance. Very rarely he is un- 
consciously sarcastic, as when a European calls 
him ** the son of a pig " (a too common formula 
of abuse), and he meekly rejoins, ** Your honour 
is my father and my mother! " which is the com- 
monest metaphor of compliment. But hilarity is 
foreign to the native character, and if he is sur- 
prised into a smile he will bend his face and re- 
lieve himself of it with a hand veiling his mouth. 
In living amongst natives, as many Europeans 
have to do, it is necessary to attune your mind to 
theirs. India is a land of lies, inhabited by peo- 
ples who express a virtuous indignation against 
lying. It is also a land of unconscious exaggera- 
tion, for a native has the poorest idea of assessing 
things correctly, and in all information you re- 
ceive you must make an allowance. If you are 
travelling and ask a wayfarer how far it is from 



Sepia Surroundings 251 

your destination, he will, in all probability, assure 
you *' one kos''' a distance that answers to our 
mile, though it sometimes extends to two and a 
half. The place may be ten kos distant, but the 
formula remains the same, and until you begin to 
fall into the native's ways of thought and usage, 
you will meet with many bitter disappointments 
in trusting too implicitly to his word, and espe- 
cially his ideas of computation. In this particu- 
lar respect there is no one who can compete with 
the shikari, or man hired to show j^ou the haunts 
of game. The roseate hues of early dawn, which 
predict tigers considerably over twelve feet from 
nose to tip of tail, blackbuck with thirty-inch 
horns, and snipe like locusts, if credited, fade into 
grey chagrin later in the day. It is not so much 
\yVLi% in many cases as an inability to speak the 
truth; in other words, the speaker tells you what 
he thinks is the case, when as a matter of fact he 
is depicting what he wishes it may be. He does 
it not unkindly, if you could only appreciate his 
line of reasoning. ' * What was the size of the 
wild-boar ? " you ask of one who has come in with 
news of pig. " That size," is the reply, the hori- 
zontal hand indicating the altitude of a full-grown 
donkey. If you bid the man reflect and indicate 
again, he will, as likely as not, increase the 
height. 

Sepia surroundings sometimes bring serious 
nuisances with them. In the most fashionable 
part of Bombay is situated the Hindu burning- 



252 Indian Life 

ground, whereof ladies returning from the band- 
stand often have olfactory proofs. Conceive the 
scandal it would occasion in England if one of 
the principal thoroughfares were tainted with the 
smell of roasting human flesh! In the capital of 
Western India, you sniff suspiciously, shudder out 
an '*Ugh!" cram your pocket-handkerchief to 
your nose, and there is an end of it. It is a cus- 
tom of the country. Then, again, the native 
contaminates water with a most disgusting un- 
concern, washing himself in the tank from which 
you may be obliged to draw your drinking supply, 
and defiling it in sundry ways. I have alluded to 
the native's scantiness of attire; it is certainly 
something to shock, and a man taking his bath in 
public, with nothing on him but an exceedingly 
diminutive loin-cloth, is a common wayside spec- 
tacle. In parts of Southern India, the women are 
undraped from the waist upwards, the survival of 
an old custom which decreed it as an incentive to 
matrimony. All along the seaboard, you may put 
it that the female costume transgresses the laws 
of Occidental decency. Many of the lepers and 
beggars whom you see infesting the public high- 
ways are such loathsome sights that they would 
not be permitted abroad in civilised communities ; 
and the cruelty to animals habitually practised in 
overworking them is a constant disgrace. Bul- 
locks whose tails have practically been twisted 
off are exceedingly common, and the saddle sores 
and girth galls of horses and mules employed as 



Sepia Surroundings 253 

pack animals, or in wheeled vehicles, make you 
shudder. 

Minor nuisances are many. Nothing is more 
distracting to the nerves than the tom-toming that 
goes on all through the night when marriages or 
other festivals are in progress. What are the in- 
termittent concerts of tom-cats on the tiles to the 
prolonged and maddening monotony of a single 
dull note repeated at short intervals, making night 
hideous? Then there are native caste prejudices 
which create inconvenience. In some Hindu dis- 
tricts, where the slaughter of kine is prohibited, 
it is impossible to get beef. For nearly twenty 
years, off and on, I never tasted it between Feb- 
ruary and October, and have sent seventy miles 
for a Christmas sirloin, and had it brought up by 
men on foot, relieving each other in relays. A 
mere trifle, you may think; but it becomes a 
little trying when you live on a diet of mutton 
and fowl every day for many months. Pork flesh, 
be it ham or bacon, you know to be unclean to 
your Mahomedan servants, and eat it '* with all 
risks," as the auctioneers say. Under the same 
category, curiously enough, comes turkey, ac- 
counted a relation of the pig by the followers of 
the Prophet, because it carries a little rosette of 
bristles on its breast, though this may be news to 
the general. 

In another part of these pages, I have mentioned 
the system of dhlis, or complimentary offerings. 
At Christmas these assume the form of an epi- 



254 Indian Life 

demic. Here the sepia has you on hip and thigh, 
for the system of the Christmas-box brings Kast 
and West into Hne at once. It is a moot question 
whether the word *' box" may not be derived from 
bucksheesh, often abbreviated into **bux" in the 
colloquial. In India, the Christmas-box is a re- 
ciprocal function; all your servants and hangers- 
on and understrappers seize the opportunity to 
present you with a dhli, which you cannot very 
well decline. And, of course, when a native tips 
you, you must tip him back, and return nothing 
less respectable than silver for his copper. The 
dhli, with its little heap of sugar candy and rice, 
flowers and fruit, costs but a few pence at the ut- 
most, and the procession of these gifts only finds 
a termination in the number of those who conceive 
that now is the time to make a good investment. 
They come and come, and, with a sickly smile and 
sullen eye, you salaam and submit 5'ourself to the 
craftily disguised blackmail of Christmas buck- 
sheesh, inwardly cursing the accumulation of sour 
oranges, and the ascending pile of sugar-candy, 
and the hillock of rice as it expands into a young 
mountain, and consigning Christmas customs to 
the same inferno to which you habitually consign 
native ones. 

Consign them, and yet too often accommodate 
yourself to them ! Things which you know to be 
constructively wrong you acquiesce in, and con- 
done methods which are obsolete fetishes. Take 
the Indian ayah, or lady's-maid; she is in nine 



Sepia Surroundings 255 

cases out of ten of the scavenger caste! No 
fastidious Englishman will touch a sweeper or 
scavenger, and yet he allows his wife to be waited 
on by a woman of the same low breed. You can 
hardly believe it, but it is the " custom," and the 
husband is often valeted by a high-caste Brahmin 
or Rajpoot who would decline to tread on the same 
carpet as the ayah! Of all the anomalies and 
topsy-turvies of Anglo-Indian domestic economy, 
this has always struck me as the most remarkable 
in its surrender to caste prejudice and sexual in- 
feriority, lyook at your horse, hobbled by the 
hind leg as well as haltered; that is a custom of 
the country which many people in England 
would denounce as cruel. But you will find it 
adopted in most Indian stables, because it has 
been handed down by the forefathers of your 
groom as the proper way to secure a horse. Ob- 
serve the dotnestic utensils in common use in an 
Anglo-Indian's house; the gurrah, which (ypace 
Sir George Bird wood) is like a wobbling football 
filled with water, is permitted to survive when a 
water-can would be infinitely more convenient to 
fill your bath with. And those copper cooking- 
pots, which can so easily become poisonous, re- 
main in use because your cook prefers them! Can 
any one conceive a more clumsy device than the 
punkah for creating an artificial draught, with 
two coolies permanently attached to it ? And yet 
we are only just beginning in the centres of civil- 
isation to adopt electric fans and other substitutes 



256 Indian Life 

suggested by Western ingenuity. The British 
have occupied India for a hundred and fifty years, 
and have left the building of their houses to the 
native architect, whose ideas have not changed 
since the times of Clive and Warren Hastings. 
The Indian bungalow is a century behind the age, 
but it is fashioned according to a hoary old cus- 
tom, and we remain content with it. I know only 
one house in India designed on an Knglish model, 
but with the addition of verandahs; it was called 
the ** Folly." I must myself plead guilty to hav- 
ing built three bungalows, all on native lines, and 
I cannot explain why, except that it was the cus- 
tom. Even in this age of cheap Swedish and 
Japanese matches, if you call for a light for your 
cheroot in Bombay, you will be supplied with a 
piece of glowing charcoal between a pair of tongs, 
because that is the method adopted in lighting 
the native hookah. The palanquin, carried by 
native bearers, still survives in the metropolitan 
cities, although it is as antiquated as the sedan 
chair, and more awkward to get out of than a 
social scrape. Yet a pious custom helps it to 
linger on in an age of motor-cars! But I could go 
on indefinitely multiplying these immutable mys- 
teries of Asia that link us with the Georgian 
period in the economy of daily life; these tinder- 
boxes and elastic-side boots, as it were, used and 
worn under the dominion of the Emperor Edward 
the Seventh! And side by side with them, you 
have the intensely Western spectacle of a Hindu 



Sepia Surroundings 257 

running to catch a suburban train, or a Mahom- 
edan reporting the tramway conductor because he 
omitted to punch the penny-fare ticket! 

The moral influence of sepia surroundings on 
the life of an Anglo-Indian is another matter 
altogether, and of this I have left myself little 
space to write. There is no doubt that the atmos- 
phere puts a man's character to the test; some 
come out of it well, some uncommonly badly. 
The Anglo-Indian, be he ever so humble, finds 
many humbler beings to bow before him. The 
loafer on the highway has no need to shoulder 
the black man off his path, who voluntarily makes 
way for him. As you ascend in the social scale, 
this servility increases, and the sepia is ever meta- 
phorically grovelling in the dust to the white 
complexion. It is not a wholesome atmosphere 
to live in, this conscious sense of social superior- 
ity, and is apt in some cases to turn heads. The 
Anglo-Indian becomes arrogant, quick-tempered, 
and impatient. He loses the knack of saying 
** Thank you," and acquires that of bahaduring, 
which is the importation of imperialism into 
private life. He is always * ' My lord' ' or " Your 
honour " to the native, or, for a variation, ** Pro- 
tector of the poor! " or **Cherisher of the needy! " 
Do you wonder that the Anglo-Indian becomes 
puffed-up ? That he thinks more of himself than 
is compatible with his gifts and attributes ? That 
he becomes curt in his treatment of the sepia? 
Such is not unfrequently the case, and an undue 



258 



Indian Life 



exploitation of * * side " is a weak point in the 
Anglo-Indian's character. A six-months' fur- 
lough to the Colonies of Australia should be in- 
cluded in the curriculum of his life to negative the 
ill-effects of sepia surroundings and sepia servility. 




CHAPTER XVIII 

THK GI<AD CRY 

WHAT are the pros and what the cons of 
Anglo-Indian life, and to which side does 
the balance incline? I think I can strike it at 
once in the words of the familiar song, Home, 
Sweet Home. But there are two good columns of 
debtor and creditor considerations on either side 
before we arrive at it, and to some of these I will 
address myself. 

The Anglo-Indian does not take his pleasures 
sadly, and, speaking generally, manages to have 
a good time of it during his period of exile. 
There is no place like India for gaiety and amuse- 
ment, and no society which lays itself out more 
thoroughly for enjoyment. Within the short 
limits of the cooler evening hours, a vast amount 
of outdoor revelry is squeezed in. I do not speak 
of the cities, where there are large communities 
and amusement is conducted on a colossal scale, 
but of the petty out-stations which, weather per- 
mitting, become the headquarters of enjoyment, 
and in this respect contrast favourably with the 
dulness of life in English rural towns and villages. 
259 



26o Indian Life 

In fact, they compare rather with those places in 
England which are called pleasure resorts. The 
reason is not far to seek; there is little of the 
English stiffness in Anglo-Indian society; every- 
body knows everybody else; and the hours of 
recreation are of necessity the same for all. More- 
over, it often happens that there is only one meet- 
ing-place where the Europeans foregather with 
regularity and punctuality. These conditions 
bring people together, and having grouped them- 
selves, they proceed to make the most of it. A 
similar system in England, that assembled ac- 
quaintances at a stated hour and for a stated time 
every day, would probably show the same results. 

Then hospitality is universal in India, and din- 
ner parties, dances, balls, private theatricals, and 
evening entertainments are far commoner than in 
England. This, again, is not to be wondered at, 
for you have servants to do everything for you. 
The commissariat is a simple affair relegated to 
your major-domo, and a Cinderella dance or 
garden party comes within the means of many. 
Nor should I forget to mention that the race- 
course, the polo ground, the cricket pitch, and the 
tennis courts cost practically nothing for their use, 
being Government lands allotted to every station 
for the benefit of the European community. In 
short, amusement is made easj^ in India, and the 
expense of a trifling subscription will make you 
free of everything. 

Nor is India without its pleasure resorts, where 



The Glad Cry 261 

the fun is fast and furious. The Hill Stations in 
the hot weather are places where little else but 
gaiety and amusement is talked of or indulged in. 
Here are gathered together the fair sex, who can- 
not stand the heat of the baking plains, and hither 
flock men of all sorts and conditions *' on leave" 
from their several duties. English novel readers 
know a good deal about Indian Hill Stations, 
which form the background of so much fiction; 
but apart from this not very wholesome atmos- 
phere of flirtation and intrigue there is much that 
is harmless and happy. I do not know any sense 
of relief and delight greater than that of breath- 
ing in the mountain air after a long spell of the 
stifling heat below, or any scene more grateful to 
the eyes than the verdure of the hills and the pan- 
orama of distant snows after the drab monotony 
of the dusty plains. It is better than the sea to 
a Londoner, the Highlands to a Glasgow man. 
For it means something more than health; it 
brings a certain rejuvenisation of physical and 
mental energy. The cool wind soughing through 
the firs, the nights that require a blanket, the 
days that can be enjoyed out-of-doors instead of 
only survived under a punkah — these are things 
that make a run up to the hills the greatest treat 
of Anglo-Indian life. 

readies find a compensation for their lonely In- 
dian days in the gaiety of the evening hours. 
Although they are no longer all reckoned prin- 
cesses, as was the case in the good old times, and 



262 Indian Life 

ma}^ not always be able to fill their ball pro- 
grammes, they have little cause to complain. For 
Anglo-India is very attentive to its womankind, 
and ladies are admitted to not a few of its clubs. 
And although the girl who goes out to find a hus- 
band may not be so uniformly successful as were 
her foremothers thirty years ago, I fancy there 
are few " spins " — if they are still " spins " — who 
look back to the life they spent in India without 
pleasurable feelings, even should the campaign 
have been a failure from a matrimonial point of 
view. 

To the man who loves hunting, riding, and 
shooting, India is an ideal land. What are lux- 
uries confined to the rich in Kngland become 
every one's property in the Kast. For myself, I 
always associate sport with my pleasantest recol- 
lections of exile. No holidays since those of one's 
schooldays can compare to the Christmas week, 
or fortnight, spent in camp, shooting and riding. 
I can call to mind many such, when with four or 
five genial companions we cut ourselves adrift 
from railways and roads, and lived the gipsy life. 
Dear are the memories of the snug tents pitched 
under the shady mango topes; the morning gallop 
and the midday sport; the evening stroll with a 
shotgun; the dinner partaken under a green can- 
opy, with the camp-fire roaring and brightening 
up the scene, and the chairs drawn around it 
presently for sing-songs or discussions of the 
varied adventures of the day. 



The Glad Cry 263 

Another advantage of Anglo-Indian life is that 
money goes further and provides more in certain 
directions. People naturally go to India to im- 
prove their circumstances, and you may say, in a 
general way, every one is better off than he would 
have been in Kngland. Even the man on small 
means can get a vast amount of pleasure and com- 
fort out of his income, and there is but little of that 
struggle which we associate with genteel poverty. 
Taken all round, the Anglo-Indian is a well-to-do 
individual, and if his ship is not sailing smoothly, 
it is mostly his own fault. The scale of salaries 
is arranged on a far more liberal basis than in 
England, and "dreadfully poor" folk are only 
so in comparison with the dreadfully rich ones. 

And, to most people, the object attainable is 
satisfactory. The civilian has opportunities of 
great distinction open to him, and more rewards 
and decorations than in any other civil service 
under the Crown. The soldier sees plenty of 
camp-life, and the fortunate one a full share of 
fighting, and is not the poor man, financially 
speaking, he remains in other outposts of the 
Empire. The merchant has a prospect of a quick 
fortune, and professional men — doctors, barristers, 
dentists, and experts generally — make a larger in- 
come than they would in England. Mechanics 
enjoy handsome wages, and " poor whites" are 
rare, and chiefly confined to the loafing class, 
whose misfortunes you may trace to intemperance. 
The missionary lives a far from arduous life, and 



264 Indian Life 

the chaplain is the best paid clergyman in the 
church, with a pension of a pound a day after a 
comparatively short term of service. For his 
cloth, indeed, there is nobody better off than the 
Anglo-Indian *' padre." And you may say of 
the Anglo-Indian generally, he is a prosperous 
man, and judge it by the way he grumbles when 
he returns to England, and misses all the luxuries 
of Indian life. 

The climate is, of course, the great drawback, 
and yet sometimes when I get climate-cursed in 
England I think not unkindly of the hottest days 
I ever spent in India. The skies were blue, at 
least, and when it did rain it rained to some pur- 
pose. Englishmen grumble under any circum- 
stances, and do so with undeviating regularity 
against the heat of the East; and yet, I think, not 
so much as at the perverse variability and cos- 
mopolitan detestability of English meteorological 
conditions. For when the weather is a fixed 
equation you can circumvent it, and do in a meas- 
ure, in India; but when it shifts and changes, as 
it does in England, you can in practice do nothing 
but swear at it. And put east wind and I^ondon 
fog against hot* winds and monsoon vapour, and 
I honestly prefer the latter. 

As regards the quality and strenuousness of 
work, the Englishman cannot, does not, and is 
not called upon to do as much in India as at 
home. In commercial life, the office hours are 
from ten to five; but there are many more holi- 




AN INDO-MONQOLIAN WOMAN 



The Glad Cry 265 

days than in England. In a country where there 
are three creeds, each with its festivals to be ob- 
served, there are three sets of holidays, and the 
Doorga Poojahs supply a week straight off the 
reel. In Government employ, Sundays and festi- 
vals account for almost a third of the year. Then, 
again, you seldom see the Anglo-Indian bustling. 
If you go into a shop or office in the larger cities, 
there is a distinctly placid air, which argues no 
high amount of pressure. The tiffin hour is an 
oasis that occupies a big slice in the day, and I 
have known business men nap in their chairs, 
under the drowsy influence of the punkah. An- 
other point to be remembered is that nearly all the 
uninteresting clerical work in India is done by 
native clerks. It is true the civiUan is rather sur- 
feited with writing reports, and I have heard dig- 
nitaries of the administration, with inky fingers, 
swearing at the bureaucratic bead centre for its 
appetite for unnecessary details. But over his 
more practical duties the same high functionary 
may often be observed with a cheroot or cigarette 
in his mouth. In fact, nearly all Europeans 
smoke in their offices, and this habit faithfully 
reflects what I may call the sauntering ease of 
Eastern life. Military men are notoriously unem- 
ployed during the hot weather months, and the 
enforced idleness of barrack bounds is the greatest 
curse of Tommy Atkins's Indian career. The 
artisan classes are by no means driven, except on 
the railway, and there is a decided " considera- 



266 Indian Life 

tion" shown to everybody which allows the 
Anglo-Indian a great deal of latitude, not to say 
lassitude, in the execution of his duties. More- 
over, there is the ever-present native to serve him 
and be at his beck and call. Sepia surroundings 
are often a nuisance, but on occasions mightily 
convenient. Sometimes, when I look at the 
kitchen-midden heap that constitutes my writing- 
table in this land of civilisation, I sigh for my 
duftri, who used to tidy my desk twice daily in 
India, wipe my pens, fill my inkpots, set me out 
a new sheet of blotting-paper every day, array my 
writing-paper and envelopes, copy my letters in 
the press, fold and enclose them in their covers, 
and finally weigh and stamp each! Not to men- 
tion altering the date-rack, killing flies, abusing 
the punkah-wallah when he failed to create a 
strong draught, preparing a * * peg, ' ' advising me 
of the time, acting as a notebook to remind me of 
things to be done, and, so far as my personal 
comfort went, thinking for me when I was too 
lazy to think for myself! 

Occupation for occupation I would sooner be a 
European working in India than in England, and 
to sum the matter up generally I should call In- 
dian life, in its working aspect, a ** jolly easy 
one," with many compensations to make up for 
local drawbacks of climate. 

Having thus sketched in broadest outline the 
advantages of the Indian life, a few words must 
be devoted to its disadvantages, without necessity 



The Glad Cry 267 

to refer again to the climate except to point out 
the lassitude to which it gives rise, and the disincli- 
nation for work which it engenders. I know few 
things more trying than the obligation to carry 
out duties when all energ}^ is gone, and the task 
that under ordinary circumstances would yield 
satisfaction, if not pleasure, in its accomplish- 
ment, becomes an effort of compulsion very like 
slavery. I^assitude is not necessarily laziness; it 
is a running down of the system, a condition of 
mind and body for which the man who suffers 
from it cannot be blamed. It incapacitates, and 
makes work a ''grind." As a rule, I think 
Anglo-India grinds a great deal at its work. 
There are weeks and months when the Anglo- 
Indian does not enjoy the happiness of a me7is 
Sana in corpore sano, which is so essential to the 
proper conduct of the affairs of life. A man suf- 
fering from a chronic headache or permanent 
lumbago is not the individual to solve acrostics or 
dig the garden; the disabilities of lassitude are, 
in their way, just as great, and it requires the 
exercise of no common amount of will-power to 
"buckle-to," when all the starch has been melted 
out of the system, and mind and body are in a 
limp, negative state. 

Partly arising from climate, partly from circum- 
stances, comes the question of health. Ill-health 
is one of the drawbacks of life in the Bast. The 
liver is a permanent misery, and many other ills 
to which man's flesh is heir follow close on its 



268 Indian Life 

heels. A great number of Anglo-Indians suffer 
from chronic complaints who would assuredly 
have escaped their afflictions in Kngland. It is 
a trite observation to say that good health is the 
greatest of all blessings, and yet it is not until you 
begin to have experience of sickness that this 
elementary truth is realised. In a planting life in 
the jungles, it is especially trying. In the district 
wherein I lived, I remember over a dozen Euro- 
peans dying without medical aid, and in not a few 
cases from preventable causes. Three succumbed 
to cholera, and were dead before the doctor, who 
lived over twenty miles away, could gallop in. 
It is dreadful to think of life so needlessly squan- 
dered, and when the bitterness is brought home 
to you by seeing your own friends passing away, 
and yourself unable to help them, it is hard to 
bear. Moreover, the funeral has to follow death 
so immediately in the Kast that it hardly seems 
decent. You may be called on to bury a man 
with whom you were lunching the day before, 
and experiences like these score a deep mark in 
the recollection. But the saddest memory of all 
is the Indian cemetery, with its crowded, uncouth, 
masonry monuments, and its general air of deso- 
lation and abandonment. In India, the dead are 
not treated well, and it is one of the disgraces of 
British administration. In the humblest English 
village churchyards you will see more respect and 
attention paid to the resting-places of the departed 
than is paid to the tombs of many of the heroes 



The Glad Cry 269 

who helped to win India for Great Britain. Indian 
cemeteries are hideous with neglect, and in some 
of the out-of-the-way, up-country stations are 
even given over to the jungle and wild beasts. 

However, this has little to do with life in India. 
We are talking of its drawbacks, and chief 
amongst these must be placed the perennial part- 
ings between husbands and wives, parents and 
children. In England, man and wife hardly know 
what it is to dwell apart; in India, it is a common 
condition of matrimonial life for four months in 
the 3^ear, when wives have to be sent up to the 
Hill Stations. But this, again, is a far less un- 
happy state of affairs than that other alternative 
of sending wife and family home to England. 
The sorrow of separation from all he holds most 
dear hangs over the Anglo-Indian, and makes 
his life one clouded with constant and prolonged 
partings. And I think it is from this phase of it 
that India has been called the Land of Regrets. 

But there is another species of separation I 
must mention, and that is the exclusion from 
civilisation which a life in the jungles entails. In 
the selection of his career, the Anglo-Indian cuts 
himself off from much that goes to elevate life in 
the West. He is out of touch with art and 
literature, and seldom keeps up with the tide in 
politics and graver thought. It is only when he 
returns and tries to pick up the threads of Eng- 
lish life again that he realises how far he has 
fallen behind the times. I am not speaking of 



270 Indian Life 

those whose good fortune it is to be able to run 
home for a trip every two or three years, and so 
polish themselves up, but of the less happily situ- 
ated, .who do their six and seven, and even more, 
years in the country without a change. I did 
nine years once on a stretch, and confess to an 
utterly * * lost ' ' feeling when I first returned to 
Kngland. For one gets, in the phrase of the 
East, "jungly," and that is far worse than ordi- 
nary provincialism. And then, again, after these 
prolonged absences there are so many changes in 
others as well as in yourself. Not till you return 
* * home ' ' and visit your old haunts and old friends 
do you realise how many faces are missing, and 
that those partings on the outward-bound steamer, 
when you were so full of excitement and anticipa- 
tion of your new life, in the Golden Bast, had in 
them the finality of death-bed partings. Nor is 
it only faces that change; friends change, old 
familiar landmarks change, and feelings change. 
There is often a grievous disappointment in store 
for the returned Anglo-Indian, and I have fre- 
quently heard him sigh, '* Home is not home! " 

And that is a sad note to strike, for, as I began 
by saying, the Anglo-Indian's dearest word is 
*' Home." To our cousins in the Colonies, the 
land they live in is home, and Kngland only *' the 
old country"; but to the Anglo-Indian, India is 
never anything but a place of exile, and when he 
returns to the scenes so fondly remembered, only 
to find that he has been forgotten, and to feel 



The Glad Cry 271 

himself — as so many have done — a stranger in a 
strange land: well, you may score that down as 
a big debit item in the pros and co7is columns we 
are considering! And I think I may say that 
home-sickness is the commonest complaint in 
India, cheerfully borne in the general, but always 
twinging. In the monotony of life, and its lone- 
liness and lassitude, the thoughts fly back to 
Kngland with a feeling Mr. Kipling has finely 
described in one of his earlier poems : 

" Give me back one day in E^ngland, for it 's Spring in 
Kngland now ! " 

I do not doubt that there come many seasons 
when the Anglo-Indian would willingly barter a 
month of his life for a single day in England. 
There is an overpowering sadness which steals 
over a man at times, and the exile casts his eyes 
over his surroundings, and ponders upon the 
vicissitudes of life and health and the spirit of the 
lyand of Regrets enters into his soul! 

And I think it is here you must strike your bal- 
ance between the pros and cons of Anglo-Indian 
life. You will find no difl&culty in arriving at a 
conclusion. Ask the Anglo-Indian at any period 
of his career what he would most like, and he will 
answer you, '* To be going home." That is the 
glad cry of the East — going home! And its glad- 
ness is the best commentary on Anglo- Indian life! 






g^ifji^-- ^'T; 






INDKX 

Abuse, Hindustani, 77 
Administration, Indian, 68 
Amusements, Kuropean, 236, 260 

, native, 145, 149 

Anglo-Indian life, 183 

Animal life, 223 

Artisan class, 55 

Assam, the money-lender in, 167 

Astrologers, 88 

Ayahs, 254 

Baboo, the Bengali, 249 

Bachelors, Anglo-Indian, 214, 219 

Bahadurisnty 257 

Bands, German, 91 

Barbers, native, 87 

Beauty, female, 151 

Beggars, 95 

Bhang, effects of, 162 

Bird life, 223 

Bird wood, Sir George, 55, 90 

Bombay, industries of, 178 

Brahmins, 18, 125, 131 

, English, 199 

Bribery and corruption, 69 

British territory, divisions of, 13 

Buddhism, 14 
18 

273 



274 Index 

Bungalow life, 212 

Bungalows, Indian, 195, 212, 255 

Bureaucracy, 201 

Burmah, 6 

Burmese, the, 43 

"C. B.,"tlie, 197 
Camping life, 227, 231, 262 
Canning, Lord, 118 
Carriers, Indian, 57 
Cashmere, 6 
Caste, 17, 40, 44, 132, 166 

, Anglo-Indian, 199 

Child-marriage, 113, 119 

Chupprassi^ the, 68, 76, 246 

City life, 138 

Civilians, Indian, 199 

Civil service, 199, 263 

Climate, 7, 184, 263 

Coal, 178 

Cold weather, the, 228 

Congress-ze'^/ZflA, the, 174 

Consent, age of, 118 

Conservatism of Hindus, 47 

Consumption, prevalence in zenana^ 104 

Contentedness of natives, 153 

Country, 197 

Country -bred, 190, 197 

Cremation, 92 

Crime, 162 

Currency, 162 

Custom, 44, 79 

Customs, 36, 48, 132 

Dak-bungalows^ 188 
D&k-gharries^ 188 



Index 275 



Ddlals, 79 

Ddlis, 71, 253 

Dancing-girls, 90 

Death, 93 

Debt, 165 

Z>//^6'/z>-travelling, 188 

Districts, Indian, 68 

Doctors, native, 93 

Dravidians, 5 

Drawbacks of Indian life, 265 

Dress, Anglo-Indian, 190 

, of women, 134, 152 

Drinking, 194 
Dustooriey 72, 75 

Bast, the Golden, 155 
Education, 171 

Employment, Government, 79 
English officials, 68 
Entertainers, 90 
Eurasians, 208 
Europeanised natives, 173 
"Europe shops," 190 
Exchange, fixity of, 179 
Exclusiveness of the natives, 16 
Exile, Land of, 183 

Fairs, Indian, 150 

Famine, 157 

Favouritism, 78 

Fever, 158 

Fireworks, 153 

Fishing, native fondness for, 133 

Food, 132, 194, 221 

Fruit, 161 



2 76 Index 

Fuller, Mrs., on native women, 120 
Functionaries, village, 56 

Game, 159 

Games, Anglo-Indian, 236 
Glad Cry, the, 259 
Government, representative, 174 
Government appointments, 171 
Griffin, the, 185 

HAivF-castes, 208 
Hareem, the, 98 
Hareem women, 103 
Health in India, 267 
Himalayas, the, 6, 261 
Hindus, the, 13, 40, 170 
Hoarding money, 60 
Homes, Indian, 61, 139 
Hopefuls, young, 172 
Hospitality, 260 
Hot weather, the, 222 
Hotels, Indian, 186 

Idiosyncrasies, native, 37 
Idleness of natives, 102 
Inaccessibility of natives, 144 
India as it is, 3 
Indian at home, 127 
Intellectual capacity of Hindus, 170 

Jacks in office, 67 
Jains, the, 14 
Jews, 14 

Judges, native, 72 
Justice, sale of, 72 



Index 2^^ 



Kafirs^ English esteemed, 42 
Karta, the, 129 
Khodajdne, 52 
Kings, 63 
Kolarian stock, 5 
Kulin Brahmins, 29 

Labouring castes, 20 
Ladies, 196, 216, 261 
"Ladies last," 98 
Lamps, mineral oil, 34 
Languages, 4 

Laughter, etiquette of, 147 
Lawyers, native, 167 
Leper's curse, 96 
Lies, land of, 250 
Life, bungalow, 212 

Hindu home, 127, 142 

out-of-door, 227 

peasant home, 135, 138 

Lilly, Mr., quotation from, 176 

Litigation, 73, 163 

Loafers, 210 

Lumberdar, the, 95 

Luxuries, European tinned, 189 

Mahom^dans, the, 12, 15, 41 

Manners and customs, 36 

Manu, Institutes of, 19 

Marriage, early consummation of, 117 

, Hindu, 117 

, Mahomedan, no 

Marwarries, the, 60 
Maternity, easy, 106 
Meat, 161 
Men-at-arms, 81 



278 Index 

Military, the, 84, 203 
Military castes, 19 
Military civilians, 203 
Mogul, the Great, 13 
Money-lenders, 142, 167 
Moplahs, the, 15 
Music, native, 146 
Musicians, 90 

NaTionai, Congress, 176 
Nautch-girls, no, 147 
Non-official classes, 205 
Nuisances of life, 253 
Nukkle Slufy 174 
NuzzerSy 71 

Officiai^s, English, 202 

, native, 78 

Outcastes, 22 
Outcasting, effect of, 23 

Pai^anquins, survival of, 256 

Papers, daily, 191 

Parents, natives as, 143 

Pariahs, 21, 208 

Parsees, 14 

Pastimes, 133 

PatH, the, 95 

Peasant life, 135, 142 

Pestilence, 157 

Pig-sticking, 239 

Plague, the, 157 

Planter, Anglo-Indian, 233 

Planting, tea, description of, 234 

Policemen, Indian, 74 

Polo, 238 



Index 279 



Potter, the, 89 

Precedence, 196 

Priests, 18, 125 

Progress, path of, 168 

Prostitution, compulsory religious, 113, 116 

jR^rdak-wotaen, loi 

Quackery of native doctors, 92 

RAII.WAYS, II, 186, 232 
Rain, native joy at, 154 
Rajahs, 51, 62, 64 
Rajputana, 6 
Recreations, 260 
Regrets, Land of, 183, 271 
Rice, 24 

Ripon, Lord, his policy, 174 
Roman Catholics, 14 
Ryot, the, 51, 54 

Sai,T tax, 54 

Scorpions, 160 

Seclusion, zenana, 102 

Sepia surroundings, 244 

Sepoy, the native, 85 

Servants, native, 218, 230, 244 

Shooting, 246, 262 

Shopkeepers, native, 189, 192 

Sikhs, the, 14, 42 

Sind, 6 

Snakes, 160 

Soldiers, 81 

Spins, Anglo-Indian, 197 

Sport, 227 

Status, social, 205 

Suez Canal, 10, 168, 201 



28o Index 

Sunshine, in the, 141 
Superstition, 88, 123 
Suttee, cold, 122 
Sweetmeats, 162 

TamAsha, native, 146 
Tea planting, 178 
Temperance, 145 
Tent life, 229 
Thrift, 40, 137 
Toddy, 162 

Tommy Atkins, 207, 265 
Tonga transit, 188 
Travelling, 187 

Umbr^i,i,as, 33 
Usury, 167 ^ 

*'V. P." Post, 191 

Vegetarianism, 160 
Vegetarians, Hindu, 85 
Verandah, 225 
Vermin, 160 
Visiting, 187 

Wages, rate of, 164 

Walking, disinclination for, 193 

Warrens, human, 139 

Weddings, native, 109 

Wellesley, Lord, 8 

Wheelbarrows and coolies, 46 

Widows, 113, 118, 123 

Wild beasts, 159 

Wingate, Sir G., report of, 166 

Wives, Hindu, 100 

, Mahomedan, 100 



Index 



281 



Women, 106, 113, 133, 144, 148, 151 
Women's wrongs, 113 
Work, capacity of natives for, 170 
Working-man, British, 206 

Zenana^ the, 134 
Zena7ia women, 98, 134 




Our European Neighbours 

Edited by WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON 

t2°. illustrated. Each, net $1.20 
By Mail 1.30 

I.— FRENCH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By Hannah Lynch. 

" Miss lyynch's pages are thoroughly interesting and suggestive. 
Her style, too, is not common. It is marked by vivacity without 
any drawback of looseness, and resembles a stream that runs 
strongly and evenly between v?alls. It is at once distinguished and 
useful. . . . Her five-page description (not dramatization) of the 
grasping Paris landlady is a capital piece of work. , . . Such 
well-finished portraits are frequent in Miss I^ynch's book, which is 
small, inexpensive, and of a real ex^ceUence."— The London Academy. 
" Miss Lynch 's book is particularly notable. It is the first of a 
series describing the home and social life of various European 
peoples— a series long needed and sure to receive a warm welcome. 
Her style is frank, vivacious, entertaining, captivating, just the 
kind for a book which is not at all statistical, political, or contro- 
versial. A special excellence of her book, reminding one of Mr. 
Whiteing's, lies in her continual contrast of the English and the 
French, and she thus sums up her praises : ' The English are 
admirable : the French are lovable.' "—The Outlook. 

II.— GERMAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By W. H. Dawson, author of " Germany and the 
Germans," etc. 

"The book is as full of correct, impartial, well-digested, and 
well-presented information as an egg is of meat. One can only 
recommend it heartily and without reserve to all who wish to gain 
an insight into German life. It worthily presents a gpreat nation, 
now the greatest and strongest in Europe." — Commercial Advertiser. 

III.— RUSSIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By Francis H. E. Palmer, sometime Secretary t© 
H. H. Prince Droutskop-Loubetsky (Equerry to 
H, M. the Emperor of Russia). 

" We would recommend this above aU other wosks of its charac- 
ter to those seeking a clear general understanding of Russian life, 
character, and conditions, but who have not the leisure or inclina- 
tion to read more voluminous tomes. ... It cannot be too highly 
recommended, for it conveys practically all that well-informed 
people should know of 'Our European Neighbours.' "—Mail and 
Express. 



Our European Neighbours 



IV.— DUTCH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By P. M. Hough, B.A. 

"There is no other book which gives one so clear a picture of 
actual life in the Netherlands at the present date. For its accurate 
presentation of the Dutch situation in art, letters, learning, and 
politics as well as in the round of common life in town and city, 
this book deserves the heartiest -praxs^. "—Evening Post. 

"Holland is always interesting, in any line of study. In this 
work its charm is carefully preserved. The sturdy toil of the people, 
their quaint characteristics, their conservative retention of old dress 
and customs, their quiet abstention from taking part in the great 
affairs of the world are clearly reflected in this faithful mirror. The 
illustrations are of a high grade of photographic reproductions." — 
Washington Post. 

v.— SWISS LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By Alfred T. Story, author of the " Building of 
the British Empire," etc. 

"We do not know a single compact book on the same subject 
in which Swiss character in all its variety finds so sympathetic and 
yet thorough treatment ; the reason of this being that the author 
has enjoyed privileges of unusual intimacy with all classes, which 
prevented his lumping the people as a whole without distinction 
of racial and cantonal feeling."— iVa^zow. 

"There is no phase of the lives of these sturdy republicans, 
whether social or political, which Mr. Story does not touch upon ; 
and an abundance of illustrations drawn from unhackneyed sub- 
jects adds to the value of the hook.."— Chicago Dial. 

VI.— SPANISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By L. HiGGiN. 

"Illuminating in all of its chapters. She writes in thorough 
sympathy, bom of long and intimate acquaintance with Spanish 
people of to-day."— 5jf. Paul Press. 

"The author knows her subject thoroughly and has written a 
most admirable volume. She writes with genuine love for the 
Spaniards, and with a sympathetic knowledge of their character 
and their method of \if&."— Canada Methodist Review. 



Our European Neighbours 



VII.— ITALIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By LUIGI ViLLARI. 

"A most interesting and instructive volume, which presents an 
intimate view of the social habits and manner of thought of the 
people of which it treats." — Buffalo Express. 

"A book full of information, comprehensive and accurate. Its 
numerous attractive illustrations add to its interest and value. We 
are glad to welcome such an addition to an excellent series." — 
Syracuse Herald. 



VIII.— DANISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By Jessie H. Brochner. 

" Miss Brochner has written an interesting book on a fascinat- 
ing subject, a book which should arouse an interest in Denmark in 
those who have not been there, and which can make those who 
know and are attracted by the country very homesick to return."— 
Commercial Advertiser. 

"She has sketched with loving art the simple, yet pure and 
elevated lives of her countrymen, and given the reader an excellent 
idea of the Danes from every point of vi&N J '—Chicago Tribune. 



IX.— AUSTRO=HUNQARIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND 
COUNTRY 

By Francis H. E. Palmer, author of " Russian 

Life in Town and Coiintry," etc. 

"No volume in this interesting series seems to us so notable or 
valuable as this on Austro-Hungarian life. Mr. Palmer's long resi- 
dence in Kurope and his intimate association with men of mark, 
especially in their home life, has given to him a richness of experi- 
ence evident on every page of the book."— 7%^ Outlook. 

"This book cannot be too warmly recommended to those who 
have not the leisure or the spirit to read voluminous tomes of this 
subject, yet we wish a clear general understanding of Austro-Hun- 
garian "^Q."— Hartford Times. 



Our European Neighbours 



X.— TURKISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By L. M. J. Garnett. 

Miss Garnett, while not altogether ignoring the dark side of 
life in the Empire, portrays more particularly the peaceable life of 
the people— the domestic, industrial, social, and religious life and 
customs, the occupations and recreations, of the numerous and vari- 
ous races within the lEmpire presided over by the Sultan. 

" The general tone of the book is that of a careful study, the 
style is flowing, and the matter is presented in a bright, taking 
way."— 5^. Paul Press. 

"To the average mind the Turk is a little better than a blood- 
thirsty individual with a plurality of wives and a paucity of vir- 
tues. To read this book is to be pleasantly disillusioned."— /^Wzc 
Opinion. 

XI.— BELGIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By Demetrius C. Boulger 



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